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C^e &o*)zv of Cnitlj 

William George Jordan 




THE 
POWEROFTRUTH 

INDIVIDUAL-PROBLEMS 
AND'POSSmiLITIES 

WILLIAM-GEORGE-JORDAN 




NEW YORK 
BRENTANO'S 





Copyright, 1902, by Brentano's 

Published August, 1902 



THE LIBRAITY OP 
CONGRESS, 

Two Goptee Reosived 

OCT. If 1902 

CoiMJtQHT fSH'fWf 

CLASS Ou XXo No, 

%0 ! S 
COPY B. 



.J 67 



Printed by Carl H. Heintzemann Boston 



•& 



Contents 



The Power of Truth i 

The Courage to Face Ingratitude 23 

People who Live in Air Castles 41 

Swords and Scabbards 59 

The Conquest of the Preventable 75 

Tbe Companionship of Toleranee 95 

The Things that Come too Late 115 

The Way of the Reformer 133 



C^e ^otoer of Croty 



CJje ^otoer of Crutf) 



"TRUTH is the rock foundation 
j of every great character. It is 
{ loyalty to the right as we see 
L.-..-..-^ it; it is courageous living of our 
lives in harmony with our ideals; it is al- 
ways — power. 

C Truth ever defies full definition. Like 
electricity it can only be explained by 
noting its manifestation. It is the com- 
pass of the soul, the guardian of con- 
science, the final touchstone of right. 
Truth is the revelation of the ideal; but 
it is also an inspiration to realize that ideal, 
a constant impulse to live it. 
CL Lying is one of the oldest vices in the 
world — it made its debut in the first re- 
corded conversation in history, in a fa- 
mous interview in the garden of Eden. 
Lying is the sacrifice of honor to create 
a wrong impression. It is masquerading 

[ 3 ] 



€^e pxrtoer of %t\xfy 



in misfit virtues. Truth can stand alone, 
for it needs no chaperone or escort. Lies 
are cowardly, fearsome things that must 
travel in battalions. They are like a lot of 
drunken men, one vainly seeking to sup- 
port another. Lying is the partner and 
accomplice of all the other vices. It is the 
cancer of moral degeneracy in an indi- 
vidual life. 

C Truth is the oldest of all the virtues; it 
antedated man, it lived before there was 
man to perceive it or to accept it. It is 
the unchangeable, the constant. Law is 
the eternal truth of Nature — the unity 
that always produces identical results un- 
der identical conditions. When a man dis- 
covers a great truth in Nature he has the 
key to the understanding of a million phe- 
nomena ; when he grasps a great truth in 
morals he has in it the key to his spirit- 
ual re-creation. For the individual, there 
is no such thing as theoretic truth ; a great 
truth that is not absorbed by our whole 

[4] 



C^e $otoer of Croty 



mind and life, and has not become an in- 
separable part of our living, is not a real 
truth to us. If we know the truth and do 
not live it, our life is — a lie. 
C[ In speech, the man who makes Truth 
his watchword is careful in his words, he 
seeks to be accurate, neither understating 
nor over-coloring. He never states as a 
fact that of which he is not sure. What he 
says has the ring of sincerity, the hall- 
mark of pure gold. If he praises you, you 
accept his statement as "net," you do not 
have to work out a problem in mental 
arithmetic on the side to see what dis- 
count you ought to make before you ac- 
cept his judgment. His promise counts for 
something, you accept it as being as good 
as his bond,you know that no matter how 
much it may cost him to verify and fulfil 
his word by his deed, he will do it. His 
honesty is not policy. The man who is 
honest merely because it is "the best 
policy/' is not really honest, he is only 

[ 5] 



€^e $ot»er of Cwty 



politic. Usually such a man would for- 
sake his seeming loyalty to truth and 
would work overtime for the devil — if 
he could get better terms. 
C, Truth means "that which one troweth 
or believes/ ' It is living simply and square- 
ly by our belief; it is the externalizing of 
a faith in a series of actions. Truth is ever 
strong, courageous, virile, though kindly, 
gentle, calm, and restful. There is a vital 
difference between error and untruthful- 
ness. A man may be in error and yet live 
bravely by it; he who is untruthful in his 
life knows the truth but denies it. The one 
is loyal to what he believes, the other is 
traitor to what he knows. 
CL" What is Truth?" Pilate's great ques- 
tion, asked of Christ over three thousand 
years ago, hasechoed unanswered through 
the ages. We get constant revelations of 
parts of it, glimpses of constantly new 
phases, but never complete, final defini- 
tion. If we but live up to the truth that 

[ H 



C^e ptfmt of Cnity 



we know, and seek ever to know more, we 
have put ourselves into the spiritual atti- 
tude of receptiveness to know Truth in 
the fullness of its power. Truth is the sun 
of morality, and like that lesser sun in the 
heavens, we can walk by its light, live in 
its warmth and life, even if we see but a 
small part of it and receive but a micro- 
scopic fraction of its rays. 
Q Which of the great religions of the 
world is the real, the final, the absolute 
truth ? We must make our individual 
choice and live by it as best we can. Every 
new sect, every new cult, has in it a grain 
of truth, at least; it is this that attracts at- 
tention and wins adherents. This mustard 
seed of truth is often overestimated, dark- 
ening the eyes of man to the untrue parts 
or phases of the varying religious faiths. 
But, in exact proportion to the basic truth 
they contain do religions last, become per- 
manent and growing, and satisfy and in- 
spire the hearts of men. Mushrooms of 

[7] 



€^e $otoer of Cwty 



error have a quick growth, but they ex- 
haust their vitality and die, but Truth still 
lives. 

C The man who makes the acquisition of 
wealth the goal and ultimatum of his life, 
seeing it as an end rather than a means to 
an end, is not true. Why does the world 
usually make wealth the criterion of suc- 
cess, and riches the synonym of attain- 
ment? Real success in life means the in- 
dividual's conquest of himself; it means 
"how he has bettered himself " not " how 
has he bettered his fortune?" The great 
question of life is not " Whathavel ?" but 
"What am I?" 

C Man is usually loyal to what he most 
desires. The man who lies to save a 
nickel, merely proclaims that he esteems 
a nickel more than he does his honor. 
He who sacrifices his ideals, truth and 
character, for mere money or position, 
is weighing his conscience in one pan of a 
scale against a bag of gold in the other. He 

[8 ] 



€^e $Dtt>er of Ctuty 



is loyal to what he finds the heavier, that 
which he desires the more — the money. 
But this is not truth. Truth is the heart's 
loyalty to abstract right, made manifest in 
concrete instances. 

^The tradesman who lies, cheats, mis- 
leads and overcharges and then seeks to 
square himself with his anaemic con- 
science by saying, "lying is absolutely 
necessary to business/' is as untrue in his 
statement as he is in his acts. He justifies 
himself with the petty defence as the 
thief who says it is necessary to steal in 
order to live. The permanent business 
prosperity of an individual, a city or a na- 
tion rests finally on commercial integrity 
alone, despite all that the cynics may say, 
or all the exceptions whose temporary 
success may mislead them. It is truth 
alone that lasts. 

^The politician who is vacillating, tem- 
porizing, shifting, constantly trimming 
his sails to catch every puff of wind of 

[9] 



€^e ptfwtt of Cruty 



popularity, is a trickster who succeeds 
only until he is found out. A lie may live 
for a time, truth for all time. A lie never 
lives by its own vitality, it merely con- 
tinues to exist because it simulates truth. 
When it is unmasked, it dies, 
d. When each of four newspapers in one 
city puts forth the claim that its circula- 
tion is larger than all the others combined, 
there must be an error somewhere. Where 
there is untruth there is always conflict, 
discrepancy, impossibility. If all the truths 
of life and experience from the first second 
of time, or for any section of eternity, 
were brought together, there would be 
perfect harmony, perfect accord, union 
and unity, but if two lies come together, 
they quarrel and seek to destroy each 
other. 

C, It is in the trifles of daily life that 
truth should be our constant guide and 
inspiration. Truth is not a dress-suit, 
consecrated to special occasions, it is the 

[10] 



€^e $ot»er of €wt^ 



strong, well-woven, durable homespun 
for daily living. 

CL The man who forgets his promises is 
untrue. We rarely lose sight of those 
promises made to us for our individual 
benefit ; these we regard as checks we al- 
ways seek to cash at the earliest moment. 
" The miser never forgets where he hides 
his treasure/' says one of the old philoso- 
phers. Let us cultivate that sterling honor 
that holds our word so supreme, so sacred, 
that to forget it would seem a crime, to 
deny it would be impossible. 
C,The man who says pleasant things and 
makes promises which to him are light as 
air, but to someone else seem the rock 
upon which a life's hope is built is cruelly 
untrue. He who does not regard his ap- 
pointments, carelessly breaking them or 
ignoring them, is the thoughtless thief 
of another's time. It reveals selfishness, 
carelessness, and lax business morals. It is 
untrue to the simplest justice of life. 



%\>z pttixxt of Cwty 



C Men who split hairs with their con- 
science, who mislead others by deft, 
shrewd phrasing which may be true in 
letter yet lying in spirit and designedly 
uttered to produce a false impression, are 
untruthful in the most cowardly way. 
Such men would cheat even in solitaire. 
Like murderers they forgive themselves 
their crime in congratulating themselves 
on the cleverness of their alibi. 
CL The parent who preaches honor to his 
child and gives false statistics about the 
child's age to the conductor, to save a 
nickel, is not true. 

C,The man who keeps his religion in 
camphor all week and who takes it out 
only on Sunday, is not true. He who seeks 
to get the highest wages for the least pos- 
sible amount of service, is not true. The 
man who has to sing lullabies to his con- 
science before he himself can sleep, is not 
true. 
€L Truth is the straight line in morals. It 

[12] 



C^e potter of Cruty 



is the shortest distance between a fact and 
the expression of it. The foundations of 
truth should ever be laid in childhood. It 
is then that parents should instil into the 
young mind the instant, automatic turn- 
ing to truth, making it the constant at- 
mosphere of the mind and life. Let the 
child know that "Truth above all things" 
should be the motto of its life. Parents 
make a great mistake when they lookupon 
a lie as a disease in morals ; it is not always 
a disease in itself, it is but a symptom. Be- 
hind every untruth is some reason, some 
cause, and it is this cause that should be 
removed. The lie may be the result of 
fear, the attempt to cover a fault and to 
escape punishment; it may be merely the 
evidence of an over-active imagination ; 
it may reveal maliciousness or obstinacy; 
it may be the hunger for praise that leads 
the child to win attention and to startle 
others by wonderful stories; it may be 
merely carelessness in speech, the reckless 

[•3] 



C^e $ot»er of Crwt^ 



use of words; it may be acquisitiveness 
that makes lying the handmaid of theft. 
But if, in the life of the child or the adult, 
the symptom be made to reveal the dis- 
ease, and that be then treated, truth reas- 
serts itself and the moral health is restored. 
C. Constantly telling a child not to lie is 
giving life and intensity to "the lie." The 
true method is to quicken the moral 
muscles from the positive side, urge the 
child to be honest, to be faithful, to be 
loyal, to be fearless to the truth. Tell him 
ever of the nobility of courage to speak the 
true, to live the right, to hold fast to prin- 
ciples of honor in every trifle — -then he 
need never fear to face any of life's crises. 
CThe parent must live truth or the child 
will not live it. The child will startle you 
with its quickness in puncturing the 
bubble of your pretended knowledge; in 
instinctively piercing the heart of a soph- 
istry without being conscious of process ; 
in relentlessly enumerating your unful- 

[>4] 



€;^e p>ot»er of Cmt^ 



filled promises; in detecting with the jus- 
tice of a court of equity a technicality of 
speech that is virtually a lie. He will jus- 
tify his own lapses from truth by appeal 
to some white lie told to a visitor, and 
unknown to be overheard by the little 
one, whose mental powers we ever under- 
estimate in theory though we may over- 
praise in words. 

4^ Teach the child in a thousand ways, 
directly and indirectly, the power of truth, 
the beauty of truth, and the sweetness and 
rest of companionship with truth. 
^ And if it be the rock-foundation of the 
child character, as a fact, not as a theory, 
the future of that child is as fully assured 
as it is possible for human prevision to 
guarantee. 

Q The power of Truth, in its highest, 
purest, and most exalted phases, stands 
squarely on four basic lines of relation, — 
the love of truth, the search for truth, faith 
in truth, and work for truth. 

E'«s] 



C^e ptfwzt of Ctutl) 



C[ The love of Truth is the cultivated hun- 
ger for it in itself and for itself, without 
any thought of what it may cost, what 
sacrifices it may entail, what theories or 
beliefs of a life-time may be laid desolate. 
In its supreme phase, this attitude of life 
is rare, but unless one can begin to put 
himself into harmony with this view, the 
individual will only creep in truth, when 
he might walk bravely. With the love of 
truth, the individual scorns to do a mean 
thing, no matter what be the gain, even 
if the whole world would approve. He 
would not sacrifice the sanction of his own 
high standard for any gain, he would not 
willingly deflect the needle of his thought 
and act from the true North, as he knows 
it, by the slightest possible variation. He 
himself would know of the deflection — 
that would be enough. What matters it 
what the world thinks if he have his own 
disapproval ? 

C, The man who has a certain religious 
[16] 



C^e $ot»er of Cwty 



belief and fears to discuss it, lest it may be 
proved wrong, is not loyal to his belief, he 
has but a coward' s faithfulness to his pr ej u- 
dices. If he were a lover of truth, he would 
be willing at any moment to surrender his 
belief for a higher, better, and truer faith. 
<^ The man who votes the same ticket in 
politics, year after year, without caring for 
issues, men, or problems, merely voting in 
a certain way because he always has voted 
so, is sacrificing loyalty to truth, to a weak, 
mistaken, stubborn attachment to a worn- 
out precedent. Such a man should stay in 
his cradle all his life — because he spent 
his early years there. 
^ The search for Truth means that the 
individual must not merely follow truth 
as he sees it, but he must, so far as he can, 
search to see that he is right. When the 
Kearsarge was wrecked on the Roncador 
Reef, the captain was sailing correctly by 
his chart. But his map was an old one; the 
sunken reef was not marked down. Loy- 



C^e po<mt of Cruty 



alty to back-number standards means stag- 
nation. In China they plow to-day, but 
they plow with the instrument of four 
thousand years ago. The search for truth 
is the angel of progress — in civilization 
and in morals. While it makes us bold and 
aggressive in our own life, it teaches us to 
be tender and sympathetic with others. 
Their life may represent a station we have 
passed in our progress, or one we must seek 
to reach. We can then congratulate our- 
selves without condemning them. All the 
truths of the world are not concentrated 
in our creed. All the sunshine of the world 
is not focused on our doorstep. We should 
ever speak the truth, — but only in love 
and kindness. Truth should ever extend 
the hand of love; never the hand clench- 
ing bludgeon. 

^ Faith in Truth is an essential to perfect 
companionship with truth. The individ- 
ual must have perfect confidence and as- 
surance of the final triumph of right, and 

[18] 



%ty ^otoer of Crut^ 



order, and justice, and believe that all 
things are evolving toward that divine 
consummation, no matter how dark and 
dreary life may seem from day to day. No 
real success, no lasting happiness can exist 
except it be founded on the rock of truth. 
The prosperity that is based on lying, de- 
ception, and intrigue, is only temporary 
— it cannot last any more than a mush- 
room can outlive an oak. Like the blind 
Samson, struggling in the temple, the in- 
dividual whose life is based on trickery 
always pulls down the supporting columns 
of his own edifice, and perishes in the 
ruins. No matter what price a man may 
pay for truth, he is getting it at a bargain. 
The lying of others can never hurt us long, 
it always carries with it our exoneration 
in the end. During the siege of Sebasto- 
pol, the Russian shells that threatened to 
destroy a fort opened a hidden spring of 
water in the hillside, and saved the thirst- 
ing people they sought to kill. 

[»9] 



C^e ptitotK of Cwty 



C Work for the interests and advance- 
ment of Truth is a necessary part of real 
companionship. If a man has a love of 
truth, if he searches to find it, and has faith 
in it, even when he cannot find it, will he 
not work to spread it ? The strongest way 
for man to strengthen the power of truth 
in the world is to live it himself in every 
detail of thought, word, and deed — to 
make himself a sun of personal radiation 
of truth, and to let his silent influence 
speak for it and his direct acts glorify it so 
far as he can in his sphere of life and action. 
Let him first seek to be, before he seeks to 
teach or to do, in any line of moral growth. 
C. Let man realize that Truth is essentially 
an intrinsic virtue, in his relation to him- 
self even if there were no other human 
being living; it becomes extrinsic as he 
radiates it in his daily life. Truth is first, in- 
tellectual honesty — the craving to know 
the right ; second, it is moral honesty, the 
hunger to live the right. 



Wtyt prtoer of Cmt^ 



C, Truth is not a mere absence of the vices. 
This is only a moral vacuum. Truth is the 
living, pulsing breathing of the virtues of 
life. Mere refraining from wrong-doing 
is but keeping the weeds out of the gar- 
den of one's life. But this must be fol- 
lowed by positive planting of the seeds of 
right to secure the flowers of true living. 
To the negatives of the Ten Command- 
ments must be added the positives of the 
Beatitudes. The one condemns, the other 
commends; the one forbids, the other in- 
spires; the one emphasizes the act, the 
other the spirit behind the act. The whole 
truth rests not in either, but in both. 
C[ A man cannot truly believe in God 
without believing in the final inevitable 
triumph of Truth. If you have Truth on 
your side you can pass through the dark 
valley of slander, misrepresentation and 
abuse, undaunted, as though you wore a 
magic suit of mail that no bullet could 
enter, no arrow could pierce. You can hold 

[21] 



C^e $otoer of Cntty 



your head high, toss it fearlessly and de- 
fiantly, look every man calmly and un- 
flinchingly in the eye, as though you rode, 
a victorious king, returning at the head 
of your legions with banners waving and 
lances glistening, and bugles filling the 
air with music. You can feel the great 
expansive wave of moral health singing 
through you as the quickened blood 
courses through the body of him who 
is gladly, gloriously proud of physical 
health. You will know that all will come 
right in the end, that it must come, that 
error must flee before the great white light 
of truth, as darkness slinks away into 
nothingness in the presence of the sun- 
burst. Then, with Truth as your guide, 
your companion, your ally, and inspira- 
tion, you tingle with the consciousness of 
your kinship with the Infinite and all 
the petty trials, sorrows and sufferings of 
life fade away like temporary, harmless 
visions seen in a dream. 

[»aj 



Clje Courage to efface SJngratituDe 



CJ)e Courage to jface 
^ngratttutie 

r~^lNGRATITUDE, the most 
j popular sin of humanity, is for- 
! getfulness of the heart. It is the 

L~~~~ h,4 revelation of the emptiness of 

pretended loyalty. The individual who 
possesses it finds it the shortest cut to all 
the other vices. 

C, Ingratitude is a crime more despicable 
than revenge, which is only returning evil 
for evil, while ingratitude returns evil for 
good. People who are ungrateful rarely 
forgive you if you do them a good turn. 
Their microscopic hearts resent the hu- 
miliation of having been helped by a su- 
perior, and this rankling feeling filtering 
through their petty natures often ends in 
hate and treachery. 

C Gratitude is thankfulness expressed in 
action. It is the instinctive radiation of 
justice, giving new life and energy to the 



C^e Courage to fact gjngratttutie 

individual from whom it emanates. It is 
the heart's recognition of kindness that 
the lips cannot repay. Gratitude never 
counts its payments. It realizes that no 
debt of kindness can ever be outlawed, 
ever be cancelled, ever paid in full. Grat- 
itude ever feels the insignificance of its 
instalments ; ingratitude the nothingness 
of the debt. Gratitude is the flowering 
of a seed of kindness ; ingratitude is the 
dead inactivity of a seed dropped on a 
stone. 

CLThe expectation of gratitude is hu- 
man ; the rising superior to ingratitude is 
almost divine. To desire recognition of 
our acts of kindness and to hunger for 
appreciation and the simple justice of a 
return of good for good, is natural. But 
man never rises to the dignity of true 
living until he has the courage that dares 
to face ingratitude calmly, and to pursue 
his course unchanged when his good 
works meet with thanklessness or disdain. 
[26] 



C^e Courage to face %n^vatitnHt 

Q Man should have only one court of ap- 
peals as to his actions, not "what will be 
the result?" "how will it be received?" 
but "is it right ?" Then he should live his 
life in harmony with this standard alone, 
serenely, bravely, loyally and unfalter- 
ingly, making "right for right's sake" 
both his ideal and his inspiration. 
4L Man should not be an automatic gas 
machine, cleverly contrived to release a 
given quantity of illumination under the 
stimulus of a nickel. He should be like 
the great sun itself which ever radiates 
light, warmth, life and power, because it 
cannot help doing so, because these quali- 
ties fill the heart of the sun, and for it to 
have them means that it must give them 
constantly. Let the sunlight of our sym- 
pathy, tenderness, love, appreciation, in- 
fluence and kindness ever go out from us 
as a glow to brighten and hearten others. 
But do not let us ever spoil it all by go- 
ing through life constantly collecting re- 



W$z Courage to face gjugtatitu&e 

ceipts, as vouchers, to stick on the file of 
our self-approval. 

C It is hard to see those who have sat at 
our board in the days of our prosperity, 
flee as from a pestilence when misfortune 
darkens our doorway; to see the loyalty 
upon which we would have staked our 
life, that seemed firm as a rock, crack and 
splinter like thin glass at the first real test ; 
to know that the fire of friendship at 
which we could ever warm our hands in 
our hour of need, has turned to cold, dead, 
gray ashes, where warmth is but a haunt- 
ing memory. 

C To realize that he who once lived in 
the sanctuary of our affection, in the frank 
confidence where conversation seemed 
but our soliloquy, and to whom our aims 
and aspirations have been thrown open 
with no Bluebeard chamber of reserve, 
has been secretly poisoning the waters of 
our reputation and undermining us by his 
lies and treachery, is hard indeed. But no 

[>8] 



C^e Courage to tface gjngratttuDe 

matter how the ingratitude stings us, we 
should just swallow the sob, stifle the 
tear, smile serenely and bravely — seek 
to forget. 

C In justice to ourselves we should not 
permit the ingratitude of a few to make 
us condemn the whole world. We pay 
too much tribute to a few human insects 
when we let their wrong-doing paralyze 
our faith in humanity. It is a lie of the 
cynics that says " all men are ungrateful," 
a companion lie to "all men have their 
price." We must trust humanity if we 
would get good from humanity. He who 
thinks all mankind is vile is a pessimist 
who mistakes his introspection for obser- 
vation ; he looks into his own heart and 
thinks he sees the world. He is like a 
cross-eyed man, who never sees what he 
seems to be looking at. 
C Confidence and credit are the corner- 
stones of business, as they are of society. 
Withdraw them from business and the 

[«9] 



C&e Courage to face gjngtatittttie 

activities and enterprises of the world 
would stop in an instant, topple and fall 
into chaos. Withdraw confidence in hu- 
manity from the individual, and he be- 
comes but a breathing, selfish egotist, the 
one good man left, working overtime in 
nursing his petty grudge against the world 
because a few whom he has favored have 
been ungrateful. 

4£ If a man receives a counterfeit dollar 
he does not straightway lose his faith in 
all money, — at least there are no such 
instances on record in this country. If he 
has a run of three or four days of dull 
weather he does not say "the sun ceases 
to exist, there are surely no bright days to 
come in the whole calendar of time/' 
Q If a man's breakfast is rendered an un- 
pleasant memory by some item of food 
that has outlived its usefulness, he does not 
forswear eating. If a man finds under a 
tree an apple with a suspicious looking 
hole on one side, he does not condemn 

[30] 



€^e Courage to face %nqxatitutiz 

the whole orchard; he simply confines his 
criticism to that apple. But he who has 
helped some one who, later, did not pass a 
good examination on gratitude, says in a 
voice plaintive with the consciousness of 
injury, andwith a nod of his head that im- 
plies the wisdom of Solomon: "I have 
had my experience, I have learned my 
lesson. This is the last time I will have 
faith in any man. I did this for him, and 
that for him, and now, look at the re- 
sult!" 

C Then he unrolls a long schedule of fa- 
vors, carefully itemized and added up, till 
it seems the pay-roll of a great city. He 
complains of the injustice of one man, yet 
he is willing to be unjust to the whole 
world, making it bear the punishment of 
the wrong of an individual. There is too 
much vicarious suffering already in this 
earth of ours without this lilliputian at- 
tempt to extend it by syndicating one 
man's ingratitude. If one man drinks to 

[3'] 



C^e Courage to tface 9Jngratitwtie 

excess, it is not absolute justice to send 
the whole world to jail. 
^ The farmer does not expect every seed 
that he sows in hope and faith to fall on 
good ground and bring forth its harvest ; 
he is perfectly certain that this will not 
be so, cannot be. He is counting on the 
final outcome of many seeds, on the har- 
vest of all, rather than on the harvest of 
one. If you really want gratitude, and 
must have it, be willing to make many 
men your debtors. 

C, The more unselfish, charitable and 
exalted the life and mission of the indi- 
vidual, the larger will be the number of 
instances of ingratitude that must be met 
and vanquished. The thirty years of 
Christ's life was a tragedy of ingratitudes. 
Ingratitude is manifest in three degrees of 
intensity in the world — He knew them 
all in numberless bitter instances. 
<L The first phase, the simplest and most 
common, is that of thoughtless thankless- 

[32] 



€^e Courage to efface gjngratfta&e 

ness, as was shown in the case of the ten 
lepers healed in one day — nine departed 
without a word, only one gave thanks. 
C The second phase of ingratitude is de- 
nial, a positive sin, not the mere negation 
of thanklessness. This was exemplified in 
Peter, whose selfish desire to stand well 
with two maids and some bystanders, in 
the hour when he had the opportunity to 
be loyal to Christ, forgot his friendship, 
lost all thought of his indebtedness to his 
Master, and denied Him, not once or 
twice, but three times. 
C The third phaseof ingratitudeis treach- 
ery, where selfishness grows vindictive, as 
shown by Judas, the honored treasurer of 
the little band of thirteen, whose j ealousy, 
ingratitude, and thirty pieces of silver, 
made possible the tragedy of Calvary. 
C These three — thanklessness, denial 
and treachery — run the gamut of ingrati- 
tude, and the first leads to the second, and 
the second prepares the way for the third. 

[33] 



C^e Courage to tface 3Ittgratitwlie 

C[We must ever tower high above de- 
pendence on human gratitude or we can 
do nothing really great, nothing truly- 
noble. The expectation of gratitude is the 
alloy of an otherwise virtuous act. It ever 
dulls the edge of even our best actions. 
Most persons look at gratitude as a pro- 
tective tariff on virtues. The man who is 
weakened in well-doing by the ingrati- 
tude of others, is serving God on a salary 
basis. He is a hired soldier, not a volun- 
teer. He should be honest enough to see 
that he is working for a reward ; like a 
child, he is being good for a bonus. He 
is really regarding his kindness and his 
other expressions of goodness as moral 
stock he is willing to hold only so long as 
they pay dividends. 

C There is in such living always a touch 
of the pose ; it is waiting for the applause 
of the gallery. We must let the conscious- 
ness of doing right, of living up to our 
ideals, be our reward and stimulus, or life 

[34] 



€^e Courage to face g;ngratttuDe 

will become to us but a series of failures, 
sorrows and disappointments. 
CL Much of theseemingingratitudein life 
comes from our magnifying of our own 
acts, our minifying of the acts of others. 
We may have over-estimated the impor- 
tance of something that we have done; it 
may have been most trivial, purely inci- 
dental, yet the marvellous working of the 
loom of time brought out great and unex- 
pected results to the recipient of our favor. 
We often feel that wondrous gratitude is 
due us, though we were in no wise the in- 
spiration of the success we survey with 
such a feeling of pride. A chance intro- 
duction given by us on the street may, 
throughaninfmity of circumstances, make 
our friend a millionaire. Thanks may be 
due us for the introduction, and perhaps 
not even that, for it might have been un- 
avoidable, but surely we err when we ex- 
pect him to be meekly grateful to us for his 
subsequent millions. 

[35] 



€^e Courage to face gittgratituDe 

^ The essence of truest kindness lies in 
the grace with which it is performed. 
Some men seem to discount all gratitude, 
almost make it impossible, by the way in 
which they grant favors. They make you 
feel so small, so mean, so inferior ; your 
cheeks burn with indignation in the ac- 
ceptance of the boon you seek at their 
hands. You feel it is like a bone thrown at 
a dog, instead of the quick, sympathetic 
graciousness that forestalls your explana- 
tions and waives your thanks with a smile, 
the pleasure of one friend who has been 
favored with the opportunity to be of ser- 
vice to another. The man who makes an- 
other feel like an insect reclining on a 
red-hot stove while he is receiving a favor, 
has no right to expect future gratitude, he 
should feel satisfied if he receives for- 
giveness. 

^ Let us forget the good deeds we have 
done by making them seem small in com- 
parison with the greater things we are do- 

[36] 



C^e Courage to jfface 3|ngratituDe 

ing, and the still greater acts we hope to 
do. This is true generosity, and will de- 
velop gratitude in the soul of him who 
has been helped, unless he is so petrified 
in selfishness as to make it impossible. But 
constantly reminding a man of the favors 
he has received from you almost cancels 
the debt. The care of the statistics should 
be his privilege ; you are usurping his pre- 
rogative when you recall them. Merely 
because it has been our good fortune to be 
able to serve some one, we should not act 
as if we held a mortgage on his immortal- 
ity, and expect him to swing the censor of 
adulation forever in our presence. 
C That which often seems to us to be in- 
gratitude, may be merely our own igno- 
rance of the subtle phases of human na- 
ture. Sometimes a man's heart is so full of 
thankfulness that he cannot speak, and in 
the very intensity of his appreciation, mere 
words seem to him paltry, petty, and in- 
adequate, and the depth of the eloquence 

[37] 



C^e Courage to fact SIngmtttutie 

of his silence is misunderstood. Sometimes 
the consciousness of his inability to repay, 
develops a strange pride — genuine grati- 
tude it may be, though unwise in its lack 
of expression — a determination to say 
nothing, until the opportunity for which 
he is waiting to enable him to make his 
gratitude an actuality. There are countless 
instances in which true gratitude has all 
the semblance of the basest ingratitude, as 
certain harmless plants are made by Na- 
ture to resemble poison-ivy. 
<£ Ingratitude is some one's protest that 
you are no longer necessary to him; it is 
often the expression of rebellion at the 
discontinuance of favors. People are rarely 
ungrateful until they have exhausted their 
assessments. Profuse expressions of grati- 
tude do not cancel an indebtedness any 
more than a promissory note settles an ac- 
count. It is a beginning, not a finality. 
Gratitude that is extravagant in words is 
usually economical in all other expression. 

[38] 



€^e Courage to efface 3jngratttuDe 

C No good act performed in the world 
ever dies. Science tells us that no atom of 
matter can ever be destroyed, that no force 
once started ever ends; it merely passes 
through a multiplicity of ever-changing 
phases. Every good deed done to others is 
a great force that starts an unending pul- 
sation through time and eternity. We mav 
not know it, we may never hear a word of 
gratitude or of recognition, but it will all 
come back to us in some form as naturally, 
as perfectly, as inevitably, as echo answers 
to sound. Perhaps not as we expect it, how 
we expect it, nor where, but sometime, 
somehow, somewhere, it comes back, as 
the dove that Noah sent from the Ark re- 
turned with its green leaf of revelation. 
C, Let us conceive of gratitude in its larg- 
est, most beautiful sense, that if we receive 
any kindness we are debtor, not merely to 
one man, but to the whole world. As we 
are each day indebted to thousands for the 
comforts, joys, consolations, and blessings 

[39] 



€^e Courage to face gjngratftutie 

of life, let us realize that it is only by kind- 
ness to all that we can begin to repay the 
debt to one, begin to make gratitude the 
atmosphere of all our living and a constant 
expression in outward acts, rather than in 
mere thoughts. Let us see the awful cow- 
ardice and the injustice of ingratitude, not 
to take it too seriously in others, not to 
condemn it too severely, but merely to 
banish it forever from our own lives, and 
to make every hour of our living the radi- 
ation of the sweetness of gratitude. 



[4°] 



people t»^o Ltbe in aft Cagtieg 



people toijo 3Lt\je in atr 
Castles 

f~rr~~~ H 'lIVING in an air-castle is about 
| as profitable as owning a half- 
J | interest in a rainbow. It is no 
L^.»_.~-.J more nourishing than a dinner 
of twelve courses - — eaten in a dream. 
Air-castles are built of golden moments 
of time, and their only value is in the raw 
material thus rendered valueless. 
C The atmosphere of air-castles is heavy 
and stupefying with the incense of vague 
hopes and phantom ideals. In them man 
lulls himself into dreaming inactivity 
with the songs of the mighty deeds he is 
going to do, the great influence he some 
day will have, the vast wealth that will be 
his, sometime, somehow, somewhere, in 
the rosy, sunlit days of the future. The 
architectural error about air-castles is that 
the owner builds them downward from 
their gilded turrets in the clouds, instead 

[43] 



people tt^o HU in £ir Cagtleg 

of up ward 'from a solid, firm foundation of 
purpose and energy. This diet of mental 
lotus-leaves is a mental narcotic, not a 
stimulant. 

^Ambition, when wedded to tireless 
energy is a great thing and a good thing, 
but in itself it amounts to little. Man can- 
not raise himself to higher things by 
what he would like to accomplish, but 
only by what he endeavors to accomplish. 
To be of value, ambition must ever be 
made manifest in zeal, in determination, 
in energy consecrated to an ideal. If it be 
thus reinforced, thus combined, the thin 
airy castle melts into nothingness, and the 
individual stands on a new strong founda- 
tion of solid rock, whereon, day by day 
and stone by stone, he can rear a mighty 
material structure of life-work to last 
through time and eternity. The air-castle 
ever represents the work of an architect 
without a builder ; it means plans never 
put into execution. They tell us that man 

[44] 



people tu^o MU in %it Cagtleg 

is the architect of his own fortunes. But 
if he be merely architect he will make 
only an air-castle of his life; he should 
be architect and builder too. 
^ Living in the future is living in an air- 
castle. To-morrow is the grave where the 
dreams of the dreamer, the toiler who 
toils not, are buried. The man who says 
he will lead a newer and better life to- 
morrow, who promises great things for 
the future, and yet does nothing in the 
present to make that future possible, is 
living in an air-castle. In his arrogance he 
is attempting to perform a miracle ; he 
is seeking to turn water into wine, to have 
harvest without seed-time, to have an end 
without a beginning. 
^ If we would make our lives worthy of 
us, grand and noble, solid and impregna- 
ble, we must forsake air-castles of dream- 
ing for strongholds of doing. Every man 
with an ideal has a right to live in the glow 
and inspiration of it, and to picture the 

[45] 



people tttyo MU in &fr Cagtleg 

joy of attainment, as the tired traveller 
fills his mind with the thought of the 
brightness of home, to quicken his steps 
and to make the weary miles seem shorter, 
but the worker should never really worry 
about the future, think little of it except 
for inspiration, to determine his course, 
as mariners study the stars, to make his 
plans wisely and to prepare for that future 
by making each separate day the best and 
truest that he can. 

C Let us live up to the fulness of our pos- 
sibilities each day. Man has only one day 
of life — to-day. He didXwz yesterday, he 
may live to-morrow, but he has only to- 
day. 

C The secret of true living — mental, 
physical and moral, material and spirit- 
ual, — may be expressed in five words: 
Live up to your portion. This is the magic 
formula that transforms air-castles into 
fortresses. 
C Men sometimes grow mellow and gen- 

[46] 



people to^o Ifte in atr Cagtleg 

erous in the thought of what they would 
do if great wealth came to them. "If I 
were a millionaire/' they say, — and they 
let the phrase melt sweetly in their mouths 
as though it were a caramel, — " I would 
subsidize genius; I would found a college; 
I would build a great hospital ; I would 
erect model tenements ; I would show the 
world what real charity is/' Oh, it is all 
so easy, so easy, this vicarious benevo- 
lence, this spending of other people's for- 
tunes ! Few of us, according to the latest 
statistics, have a million, but we all have 
something, some part of it. Are we living 
up to our portion? Are we generous with 
what we have ? 

C The man who is selfish with one thou- 
sand dollars will not develop angelic wings 
of generosity when his million comes. If 
the generous spirit be a reality with the 
individual, instead of an empty boast, he 
will, every hour, find opportunity to make 
it manifest. The radiation of kindness 

[47] 



people W)o Hifce in %ix Castles 

need not be expressed in money at all. It 
may be shown in a smile of human inter- 
est, a glow of sympathy, a word of fellow- 
ship with the sorrowing and the strug- 
gling, an instinctive outstretching of a 
helping hand to one in need. 
C. No man living is so poor that he can- 
not evidence his spirit of benevolence to- 
ward his fellowman. It may assume that 
rare and wondrously beautiful phase of 
divine charity, in realizing how often a 
motive is misrepresented in the act, how 
sin, sorrow and suffering have warped and 
disguised latent good, in substituting a 
word of gentle tolerance for some cheap 
tinsel of shabby cynicism that pretends to 
be wit. If we are not rich enough to give 
"cold, hard" cash, let us at least be too 
rich to give "cold, hard" words. Let us 
leave our air-castles of vague self-adula- 
tion for so wisely spending millions we 
have never seen, and rise to the dignity 
of living up to the full proportion of our 

[48] 



people to^o JLtbe in aft Cagtteg 

possessions, no matter how slight they 
may be. Let us fill the world around us 
with love, brightness, sweetness, gentle- 
ness, helpfulness, courage and sympathy, 
as if they were the only legal tender and 
we were Monte Cristos with untold treas- 
ures of such gold ever at our call. 
C Let us cease saying: "If I were," and 
say ever: "lam." Let us stop living in the 
subjunctive mood, and begin to live in the 
indicative. 

C[ The one great defence of humanity 
against the charge of unfulfilled duties is 
"lack of time." The constant clamoring 
for time would be pathetic, were it not for 
the fact that most individuals throw away 
more of it than they use. Time is the only 
really valuable possession of man, for with- 
out it every power within him would 
cease to exist. Yet he recklessly squanders 
his great treasure as if it were valueless. 
The wealth of the whole world could not 
buy one second of time. Yet Society assas- 

[49] 



people tttyo MU in atr Cagtleg 

sins dare to say in public that they have 
been "killing time." The time fallacy has 
put more people into air-castles than all 
other causes combined. Life is only time; 
eternity is only more time ; immortality is 
merely man's right to live through un- 
ending time. 

C " If I had a library I would read/' is the 
weak plaint of some other tenant of an air- 
castle. If a man does not read the two or 
three good books in his possession or acces- 
sible to him he would not read if he had 
the British Museum brought to his bed- 
side, and the British Army delegated to 
continual service in handing him books 
from the shelves. The time sacrificed to 
reading sensational newspapers might be 
consecrated to good reading, if the in- 
dividual were willing merely to live up to 
his portion of opportunity. 
CL The man who longs for some crisis in 
life, wherein he may show mighty cour- 
age, while he is expending no portion of 

[5°] 



people to^o Lfte in %it Cagtleg 

that courage in bearing bravely the petty 
trials, sorrows and disappointments of 
daily life, is living in an air-castle. He is 
just a sparrow looking enviously at the 
mountain crags where the hardy eagle 
builds her nest, and dreaming of being a 
great bird like that, perhaps even daring 
in a patronizing way, to criticise her 
method of flight and to plume himself 
with the medals he could win for flying 
if he only would. It is the day-by-day 
heroism that vitalizes all of a man's power 
in an emergency, that gives him confi- 
dence that when need comes he will and 
must be ready. 

CL The air-castle typifies any delusion or 
folly that makes man forsake real living 
for an idle, vague existence. Living in 
air-castles means that a man sees life in a 
wrong perspective. He permits his lower 
self to dominate his higher self; he 
who should tower as a mighty conqueror 
over the human weakness, sin and folly 

[5"] 



people tttyo JLttie in &iv Cagtleg 

that threaten to destroy his better nature, 
binds upon his own wrists the manacles 
of habit that hold him a slave. He loses 
the crown of his kingship because he sells 
his royal birthright for temporary ease 
and comfort and the showy things of the 
world, sacrificing so much that is best in 
him for mere wealth, success, position, 
or the plaudits of the world. He forsakes 
the throne of individuality for the air- 
castle of delusion. 

<L The man who wraps himself in the 
Napoleonic cloak of his egotism, hyp- 
notizing himself into believing that he is 
superior to all other men, that the opera- 
glasses of the universe are focused upon 
him and that he treads the stage alone, 
had better wake up. He is living in an 
air-castle. He who, like Narcissus, falls in 
love with his own reflection and thinks 
he has a monopoly of the great work of 
the world, whose conceit rises from him 
like the smoke from the magic bottle of 

[52] 



people to^o JLitie in atr Cagtleg 

the genii and spreads till it shuts out and 
conceals the universe is living in an air- 
castle. 

C[ The man who believes that all human- 
ity is united in conspiracy against him, 
who feels that his life is the hardest in 
all the world, and lets the cares, sorrows 
and trials that come to us all, eclipse the 
glorious sun of his happiness, darkening 
his eyes to his privileges and his blessings, 
is living in an air-castle. 
C The woman who thinks the most 
beautiful creature in the world is seen 
in her mirror, and who exchanges her 
queenly heritage of noble living for the 
shams, jealousies, follies, frivolities and 
pretences of society, is living in an air- 
castle. 

C The man who makes wealth his god 
instead of his servant, who is determined 
to get rich, rich at any cost, and who is 
willing to sacrifice honesty, honor, loy- 
alty, character, family — everything he 

[53] 



people to^o Lite in &fr Castles 

should hold dear — for the sake of a mere 
stack of money-bags, is, despite his robes 
of ermine, only a rich pauper living in an 
air-castle. 

C,The man of ultra-conservatism, the 
victim of false content, who has no plans, 
no ideals, no aspirations beyond the dull 
round of daily duties in which he moves 
like a gold-fish in a globe, is often vain 
enough to boast of his lack of progres- 
siveness,in cheap shop-worn phrases from 
those whom he permits to do his think- 
ing for him. He does not realize that 
faithfulness to duties, in its highest sense, 
means the constant aiming at the per- 
formance of higher duties, living up, so 
far as can be, to the maximum of one's 
possibilities, not resignedly plodding 
along at the minimum. A piece of ma- 
chinery will do this, but real men ever 
seek to rise to higher uses. Such a man is 
living in an air-castle. 
C. With patronizing contempt he scorns 

[54] 



people to^o Lfte in air Cagtleg 

the man of earnest, thoughtful purpose, 
who sees his goal far before him but is 
willing to pay any honest price to attain 
it; content to work day by day unceas- 
ingly, through storm and stress, and sun- 
shine and shadow, with sublime confi- 
dence that nature is storing up every 
stroke of his effort, that, though times 
often seem dark and progress but slight, 
results must come if he have but courage 
to fight bravely to the end. This man 
does not live in an air-castle ; he is but 
battling with destiny for the possession 
of his heritage, and is strengthened in 
character by his struggle, even though all 
that he desires may not be fully awarded 
him. 

C[ The man who permits regret for past 
misdeeds, or sorrow for lost opportuni- 
ties to keep him from recreating a proud 
future from the new days committed to 
his care, is losing much of the glory of 
living. He is repudiating the manna of 

[55] 



people to^o £toe in &fr Cagtleg 

new life given each new day, merely be- 
cause he misused the manna of years ago. 
He is doubly unwise, because he has the 
wisdom of his past experience and does 
not profit by it, merely because of a tech- 
nicality of useless, morbid regret. He is 
living in an air-castle. 
C[ The man who spends his time lament- 
ing the fortune he once had, or the fame 
that has taken its winged flight into ob- 
livion, frittering away his golden hours 
erecting new monuments in the cemetery 
of his past achievements and his former 
greatness, making what he ever was ever 
plead apology for what he is, lives in an 
air-castle. To the world and to the indi- 
vidual a single egg of new hope and de- 
termination, with its wondrous potency 
of new life, is greater than a thousand 
nests full of the eggs of dead dreams, or 
unrealized ambitions. 
4L Whatever keeps a man from living his 
best, truest and highest life now, in the 

[56] 



people t»^o tiU in air Cagtleg 

indicative present, if it be something that 
he himself places as an obstacle in his own 
path of progress and development, is to 
him an air-castle. 

C Some men live in the air-castle of in- 
dolence ; others in the air-castle of dissi- 
pation, of pride, of avarice, of deception, 
of bigotry, of worry, of intemperance, of 
injustice, of intolerance, of procrastina- 
tion, of lying, of selfishness, or of some 
other mental or moral characteristic that 
withdraws them from the real duties and 
privileges of living. 

4£ Let us find out what is the air-castle in 
which we, individually, spend most of our 
time and we can then begin a recreation 
of ourselves. The bondage of the air-cas- 
tle must be fought nobly and untiringly. 
C, As man spends his hours and his days 
and his weeks in an air-castle, he finds 
that the delicate gossamer-like strands 
and lines of the phantom structure grad- 
ually become less and less airy ; they 

[57] 



people to^o Utte in air Castles 

begin to grow firm and firmer, strength- 
ening with the years, until at last, solid 
walls hem him in. Then he is startled by 
the awful realization that habit and hab- 
itancy have transformed his air-castle into 
a prison from which escape is difficult. 
C^ And then he learns that the most de- 
ceptive and dangerous of all things is, — 
the air-castle. 



[58] 



Ifetoow anli ^>cabbatti0 



tootite attti feca66artM5 



p?~— ■ **t is the custom of grateful states 
j and nations to present swords 
| as tokens of highest honor to 
L^^— ~~* the victorious leaders of their 
armies and navies. The sword presented 
to Admiral Schley by the people of Phil- 
adelphia, at the close of America's war 
with Spain, cost over $3,500, the great- 
er part of which was spent on the jewels 
and decorations on the scabbard. A little 
more than half a century ago, when Gen- 
eral Winfield Scott, for whom Admiral 
Schley was named, received a beautiful 
sword from the State of Louisiana, he 
was asked how it pleased him. 
C"It is a very fine sword, indeed/ ' he 
said, "but there is one thing about it I 
would have preferred different. The in- 
scription should be on the blade, not on 
[6,] 



the scabbard. The scabbard may be taken 
from us; the sword, never." 
C, The world spends too much time, 
money and energy on the scabbard of 
life ; too little on the sword. The scabbard 
represents outside show, vanity and dis- 
play; the sword, intrinsic worth. The 
scabbard is ever the semblance ; the sword 
the reality. The scabbard is the temporal; 
the sword is the eternal. The scabbard is 
the body; the sword is the soul. The scab- 
bard typifies the material side of life; the 
sword the true, the spiritual, the ideal. 
C The man who does not dare follow his 
own convictions, but who lives in terror 
of what society will say, falling prostrate 
before the golden calf of public opinion, 
is living an empty life of mere show. He 
is sacrificing his individuality, his divine 
right to live his life in harmony with his 
own high ideals, to a cowardly, toadying 
fear of the world. He is not a voice, with 
the strong note of individual purpose ; he 
[62] 



^>toott# ant) ^cabtiattJg 

is but the thin echo of the voice of thou- 
sands. He is not brightening, sharpening 
and using the sword of his life in true 
warfare ; he is lazily ornamenting a use- 
less scabbard with the hieroglyphics of 
his folly. 

C The man who lives beyond his means, 
who mortgages his future for his present, 
who is generous before he is just, who is 
sacrificing everything to keep up with 
the procession of his superiors, is really 
losing much of life. He, too, is decorating 
the scabbard, and letting the sword rust in 
its sheath. 

C Life is not a competition with others. 
In its truest sense it is rivalry with our- 
selves. We should each day seek to break 
the record of our yesterday. We should 
seek each day to live stronger, better, truer 
lives ; each day to master some weakness 
of yesterday ; each day to repair past fol- 
lies; each day to surpass ourselves. And 
this is but progress. And individual, con- 

[63] 



scious progress, progress unending and 
unlimited, is the one great thing that dif- 
ferentiates man from all the other ani- 
mals. Then we will care naught for the 
pretty, useless decorations of society's ap- 
proval on the scabbard. For us it will be 
enough to know that the blade of our 
purpose is kept ever keen and sharp for 
the defense of right and truth, never to 
wrong the rights of others, but ever to 
right the wrongs of ourselves and those 
around us. 

C. Reputation is what the world thinks 
a man is; character is what he really is. 
Anyone can play shuttlecock with a man's 
reputation ; his character is his alone. No 
one can injure his character but he him- 
self. Character is the sword; reputation 
is the scabbard. Many men acquire in- 
somnia in standing guard over their repu- 
tation, while their character gives them 
no concern. Often they make new dents 
in their character in their attempt to cut a 

[6 4 ] 



tortus ant) ^cattbattig 

deep, deceptive filigree on the scabbard of 
their reputation. Reputation is the shell 
a man discards when he leaves life for 
immortality. His character he takes with 
him. 

C, The woman who spends thousands in 
charitable donations, and is hard and un- 
charitable in her judgments, sentimen- 
tally sympathetic with human sin and 
weakness in the abstract, while she arro- 
gates to herself omniscience in her harsh 
condemnation of individual lapses, is 
charitable only on the outside. She is let- 
ting her tongue undo the good work of 
her hand. She is too enthusiastic in deco- 
rating the scabbard of publicity to think 
of the sword of real love of humanity. 
C He who carries avarice to the point 
of becoming a miser, hoarding gold that 
is made useless to him because it does not 
fulfill its one function, circulation, and 
regarding the necessities of life as luxu- 
ries, is one of Nature's jests, that would 

[65] 



be humorous were it not so serious. He 
is the most difficult animal to classify in 
the whole natural history of humanity — 
he has so many of the virtues. He is a 
striking example of ambition, economy, 
frugality, persistence, will-power, self- 
denial, loyalty to purpose and generosity 
to his heirs. These noble qualities he 
spoils in the application. His specialty is 
the scabbard of life. He spends his days 
in making a solid gold scabbard for the 
tin sword of a wasted existence. 
C The shoddy airs and ostentations, ex- 
travagance, and prodigality of some who 
have suddenly become rich, is goldplat- 
ing the scabbard without improving the 
blade. The superficial veneer of refine- 
ment really accentuates the native vulgar- 
ity. The more you polish woodwork, the 
more you reveal the grain. Some of the 
sudden legatees of fortune have the wis- 
dom to acquire the reality of refinement 
through careful training. This is the true 
[66] 



^toottig anD ^>cabbart)0 

method of putting the sword itself in or- 
der instead of begemming the scabbard. 
Q The girl who marries merely for 
money or for a title, is a feminine Esau 
of the beginning of the century. She is 
selling her birthright of love for the pot- 
tage of an empty name, forfeiting the 
possibility of a life of love, all that true 
womanhood should hold most dear, for a 
mere bag of gold or a crown. She is deco- 
rating the scabbard with a crest and her- 
aldic designs, and with ornaments of pure 
gold set with jewels. She feels that this 
will be enough for life, and that she does 
not need love, — real love, that has made 
this world a paradise, despite all the other 
people present. She does not realize that 
there is but one real reason, but one justi- 
fication for marriage, and that is, — love; 
all the other motives are not reasons, they 
are only excuses. The phrase, "marrying 
a man for his money," as the world bluntly 
puts it, is incorrect — the woman merely 

[6 7 ] 



^toorDS ann ^caMbaW 

marries the money, and takes the man 
as an incumbrance or mortgage on the 
property. 

C The man who procrastinates, filling his 
ears with the lovely song of " to-morrow/ ' 
is following the easiest and most restful 
method of shortening the possibilities of 
life. Procrastination is stifling action by 
delay, it is killing decision by inactivity, 
it is drifting on the river of time, instead 
of rowing bravely toward a desired harbor. 
It is watching the sands in the hour-glass 
run down before beginning any new work, 
then reversing the glass and repeating the 
observation. The folly of man in thus de- 
laying is apparent, when any second his 
life may stop, and the sands of that single 
hour may run their course, — and he will 
not be there to see. 

C Delay is the narcotic that paralyzes en- 
ergy. When Alexander was asked how he 
conquered the world, he said: "By not 
delaying." Let us not put off till to-mor- 
[68] 



row the duty of to-day ; that which our 
mind tells us should be done to-day, our 
mind and body should execute. To-day is 
the sword we should hold and use; to- 
morrow is but the scabbard from which 
each new to-day is withdrawn. 
C The man who wears an oppressive, 
pompous air of dignity, because he has 
accomplished some little work of impor- 
tance, because he is vested with a brief 
mantle of authority, loses sight of the true 
perspective of life. He is destitute of hu- 
mor ; he takes himself seriously. It is a 
thousand-dollar scabbard on a two-dollar 
sword. 

C. The man who is guilty of envy is the 
victim of the oldest vice in the history of 
the world, themeanestandmostdespicable 
of human traits. It began in the Garden of 
Eden, when Satan envied Adam and Eve. 
It caused the downfall of man and the first 
murder — Cain's unbrotherly act to Abel. 
Envy is a paradoxic vice. It cannot suffer 

[6 9 ] 



bravely the prosperity of another, it has 
mental dyspepsia because someone else is 
feasting, it makes its owner's clothes turn 
into rags at sight of another's velvet. 
Envy is the malicious contemplation of 
the beauty, honors, success, happiness, or 
triumph of another. It is the mud that 
inferiority throws at success. Envy is the 
gangrene of unsatisfied ambition, it eats 
away purpose and kills energy. It is ego- 
tism gone to seed; it always finds the 
secret of its non-success in something 
outside itself. 

C Envy is the scabbard, but emulation is 
the sword. Emulation regards the success 
of another as an object lesson; it seeks in 
the triumph of another the why, the rea- 
son, the inspiration of method. It seeks to 
attain the same heights by the path it thus 
discovers, not to hurl down from his emi- 
nence him who points out the way of at- 
tainment. Let us keep the sword of emu- 
lation ever brightened and sharpened in 

[?o] 



^toortig attti ^>cabbart>0 



the battle of honest effort, not idly dulling 
and rusting in the scabbard of envy. 
C The supreme folly of the world, the 
saddest depths to which the human mind 
can sink, is atheism. He surely is to be 
pitied who permits the illogical philoso- 
phy of petty infidels, or his misinterpre- 
tations of the revelations of science, to 
cheat him of his God. He pins his faith 
to some ingenious sophistry in the rea- 
soning of those whose books he has read 
to sum up for him the whole problem, 
and in hopeless egotism shuts his eyes to 
the million proofs in nature and life, be- 
cause the full plans of Omnipotence are 
not made clear to him. 
C On the technicality of his failure to 
understand some one point — perhaps it 
is why sin, sorrow, suffering and injustice 
exist in the world — he declares he will 
not believe. He might as well disbelieve 
in the sky above him because he cannot 
see it all ; discredit the air he breathes 

[7-] 



because it is invisible ; doubt the reality 
of the ocean because his feeble vision can 
take in but a few miles of the great sea ; 
deny even life itself because he cannot see 
it, and no anatomist has found the subtle 
essence to hold it up to view on the end 
of his scalpel. 

C. He dares to disbelieve in God despite 
His countless manifestations, because he 
is not taken into the full confidence of 
the Creator and permitted to look over 
and check offthe ground-plans of the uni- 
verse. He sheathes the sword of belief in 
the dingy scabbard of infidelity. He does 
not see the proof of God in the daily mir- 
acle of the rising and setting of the sun, 
in the seasons, in the birds, in the flowers, 
in the countless stars, moving in their 
majestic regularity at the command of 
eternal law, in the presence of love, jus- 
tice, truth in the hearts of men, in that 
supreme confidence that is inborn in hu- 
manity, making even the lowest savage 

l>] 



^toorDg ant) ^cabbarDg 

worship the Infinite in some form. It is 
the petty vanity of cheap reasoning that 
makes man permit the misfit scabbard of 
infidelity to hide from him the glory of 
the sword of belief. 

C The philosophy of swords and scab- 
bards is as true of nations as of individuals. 
When France committed the great crime 
of the nineteenth century, by condemn- 
ing Dreyfus to infamy and isolation, deaf- 
ening her ears to the cries of justice, and 
seeking to cover her shame with greater 
shame, she sheathed the sword of a na- 
tion's honor in the scabbard of a nation's 
crime. The breaking of the sword of 
Dreyfus when he was cruelly degraded 
before the army, typified the degrada- 
tion of the French nation in breaking 
the sword of justice and preserving care- 
fully the empty scabbard with its ironic 
inscription, "Vive la justice." 
C The scabbard is ever useless in the hour 
of emergency ; then it is upon the sword 

[73] 



^tootftg and ^cabbartig 

itself that we must rely. Then the worth- 
lessness of show, sham, pretence, gilded 
weakness is revealed to us. Then the triv- 
ialities of life are seen in their true form. 
The nothingness of everything but the 
real, the tried, the true, is made luminant 
in an instant. Then we know whether 
our living has been one of true prepara- 
tion, of keeping the sword clean, pure, 
sharp and ready, or one of mere idle, 
meaningless, day-by-day markings of 
folly on the empty scabbard of a wasted 
life. 



[74] 



€^e Conquest of t^e $retoentatile 




Cije Conquest of tfje 
preventable 

"THIS world would be a delight- 
| ful place to live in — if it were 
j not for the people. They really 
J cause all the trouble. Man's 
worst enemy is always man. He began to 
throw the responsibility of his transgres- 
sions on some ono else in the Garden of 
Eden, and he has been doing so ever 
since. 

C The greater part of the pain, sorrow 
and misery in life is purely a human in- 
vention, yet man, with cowardly irrever- 
ence, dares to throw the responsibility on 
God. It comes through breaking laws, 
laws natural, physical, civic, mental or 
moral. These are laws which man knows, 
but he disregards ; he takes chances ; he 
thinks he can dodge results in some way. 
But Nature says, " He who breaks, pays." 
There are no dead-letter laws on the 

[77] 



%ty Conquest of t^e ^refcentable 

divine statute-books of life. When a man 
permits a torchlight procession to parade 
through a powder magazine, it is not 
courteous for him to refer to the subse- 
quent explosion as " one of the mysteri- 
ous workings of Providence." 
C Nine tenths of the world's sorrow, mis- 
fortune and unhappiness is preventable. 
The daily newspapers are the great chron- 
iclers of the dominance of the unneces- 
sary. Paragraph after paragraph, column 
after column, and page after page of the 
dark story — accidents, disasters, crime, 
scandal, human weakness and sin — might 
be checked off with the word " prevent- 
able." In each instance were our infor- 
mation full enough, our analysis keen 
enough, we could trace each back to its 
cause, to the weakness or the wrong from 
which it emanated. Sometimes it is care- 
lessness, inattention, neglect of duty, 
avarice, anger, jealousy, dissipation, be- 
trayal of trust, selfishness, hypocrisy, re- 

[78] 



€^e Conquest of t^e preventable 

venge, dishonesty, — any of a hundred 
phases of the preventable. 
C That which can be prevented, should 
be prevented. It all rests with the indi- 
vidual. The "preventable" exists in three 
degrees: First, that which is due to the 
individual solely and directly ; second, 
that which he suffers through the wrong- 
doing of those around him, other indi- 
viduals; third, those instances wherein he 
is the unnecessary victim of the wrongs 
of society, the innocent legatee of the 
folly of humanity — and society is but the 
massing of thousands of individuals with 
the heritage of manners, customs and laws 
they have received from the past. 
C, We sometimes feel heart-sick and 
weary in facing failure, when the fortune 
that seemed almost in our fingers slips 
away because of the envy, malice or 
treachery of some one else. We bow under 
the weight of a sorrow that makes all life 
grow dark and the star of hope fade from 

[79] 



C^e Conquest of tyz ^tefcentalrte 

our vision ; or we meet some unnecessary 
misfortune with a dumb, helpless despair. 
"It is all wrong/' we say, "it is cruel, it 
is unjust. Why is it permitted ?" And, in 
the very intensity of our feeling, we half- 
unconsciously repeat the words over and 
over again, in monotonous iteration, as if 
in some way the very repetition might 
bring relief, might somehow soothe us. 
Yet, in most instances, it could be pre- 
vented. No suffering is caused in the world 
by right. Whatever sorrow there is that 
is preventable, comes from inharmony or 
wrong of some kind. 
C, In the divine economy of the universe 
most of the evil, pain and suffering are 
unnecessary, even when overruled for 
good, and perhaps, if our knowledge were 
perfect, it would be seen that none is nec- 
essary, that all is preventable. The fault is 
mine, or yours, or the fault of the world. 
It is always individual. The world itself 
is but the cohesive united force of the 

[go] 



C^e Conquest of t^e pvtUntahlt 

thoughts, words and deeds of millions 
who have lived or who are living, like 
you and me. By individuals has the great 
wrong that causes our preventable sorrow 
been built up, by individuals must it be 
weakened and transformed to right. And 
in this, too, it is to a great degree our fault ; 
we care so little about rousing public sen- 
timent, of lashing it into activity unless it 
concerns us individually. 
<L The old Greek fable of Atlas, the Afri- 
can king, who supported the world on his 
shoulders, has a modern application. The 
individual is the Atlas upon whom the 
fate of the world rests to-day. Let each 
individual do his best, — and the result is 
foreordained; it is but a matter of the un- 
conquerable massing of the units. Let 
each individual bear his part as faithfully 
as though all the responsibility rested on 
him, yet as calmly, as gently and as un- 
worried as though all the responsibility 
rested on others. 

[81] 



€^e Conquest of t^e preventable 

C, Most accidents are preventable — as at 
Balaclava, "someone hasblundered." One 
of the great disasters of the nineteenth 
century was the Johnstown flood, where 
the bursting of a dam caused the loss of 
more than six thousand lives. The flood 
was not a mere accident, it was a crime. 
A leaking dam, for more than a year 
known to be unsafe, known to be unable 
to withstand any increased pressure, stood 
at the head of the valley. Below it lay a 
chain of villages containing over forty-five 
thousand persons in the direct line of the 
flood. When the heavy rains came the 
weakened dam gave way. Had there been 
one individual, one member of the South 
Fork Fishing Club brave enough to have 
done merely his duty, one member with 
the courage to so move his fellows and to 
stir up public action to make the barrier 
safe, over six thousand murders could 
have been prevented. 
C^When a tired engineer, sleepy from 

[82] 



€^e Conquest of t^e preventable 

overwork, can no longer cheat nature of 
her needed rest, and, drowsing for a mo- 
ment in his cab, fails to see the red signal 
light of danger, or to heed the explod- 
ing of the warning torpedo, the wreck 
that follows is not chargeable to the Al- 
mighty. It is but an awful memorial of 
a railroad corporation's struggle to save 
two dollars. One ounce of prevention is 
worth six pounds of coroner's inquest. 
It is a crime to balance the safety and 
sacredness of human life in the scales with 
the petty saving that comes from trans- 
forming a man into a mechanism and for- 
getting he has either a soul or a body. 
True, just and wise labor laws are part of 
society's weapon for fighting the prevent- 
able. 

C, When a terrible fire makes a city deso- 
late and a nation mourn, the investigation 
that follows usually shows that a little 
human foresight could have prevented it, 
or at least, lessened the horror of it all. 

[83] 



€^e Conquest of tye p^efcentaMe 

If chemicals or dynamite are stored in 
any building in excess of what wise legis- 
lation declares is safe, some one has been 
cruelly careless. Perhaps it is some in- 
spector who has been disloyal to his trust, 
by permitting bribes to chloroform his 
sense of duty. If the lack of fire-escapes 
adds its quota to the list of deaths, or if 
the avarice of the owner has made his 
building a fire-trap, public feeling be- 
comes intense, the newspapers are justly 
loud in their protests, and in demands 
that the guilty ones be punished. " If the 
laws already on the statute books do not 
cover the situation/' we hear from day 
to day, " new laws will be framed to make 
a repetition of the tragedy impossible" ; 
we are promised all kinds of reforms; the 
air seems filled with a spirit of regenera- 
tion ; the mercury of public indignation 
rises to the point where " fever-heat " 
seems a mild, inadequate term. 
C. Then, as the horror begins to fade in 

[84] 



€^e Conquest of t^e preventable 

the perspective of the past, men go 
quietly back to their own personal cares 
and duties, and the mighty wave of right- 
eous protest that threatened so much, dies 
in gentle lapping on the shore. What has 
been all men's concern seems soon to 
concern no one. The tremendous energy 
of the authorities seems like the gesture 
of a drunken man, that starts from his 
shoulder with a force that would almost 
fell an ox but when it reaches the hand 
it has expended itself, and the hand drops 
listlessly in the air with hardly power 
enough to disturb the serenity of a butter- 
fly. There is always a little progress, a 
slight advance, and it is only the constant 
accumulation of these steps that is giv- 
ing to the world greater dominion over 
the preventable. 

C Constant vigilance is the price of the 
conquest of the preventable. We have no 
right to admit any wrong or evil in the 
worldasnecessary,untilwehaveexhausted 

[85] 



W%t Conquest of t^e ^retoentafcle 

every precaution that human wisdom can 
suggest to prevent it. When a man with a 
pistol in his right hand, clumsily covered 
with a suspicious-looking handkerchief, 
moved along in a line of people, and pre- 
senting his left hand to President McKin- 
ley, pressed his weapon to the breast of the 
Chief Executive of the American people, 
some one of the secret service men, paid 
by the nation to guard their ruler, should 
have watched so zealously that the tragedy 
would have been impossible. Two Presi- 
dents had already been sacrificed, but 
twenty years of immunity had brought a 
dreamy sense of security that lessened the 
vigilance. We should emulate the exam- 
ple of the insurance companies who de- 
cline certain risks that are " extra haz- 
ardous/' 

^ Poverty has no necessary place in life. 
It is a disease that results from the weak- 
ness, sin, and selfishness of humanity. Na- 
ture is boundless in her generosity; the 
[86] 



Wqt Conquest of tyz preventable 

world produces sufficient to give food, 
clothing, and comfort to every individual. 
Poverty is preventable. Poverty may re- 
sult from theshiftlessness, idleness, intem- 
perance, improvidence, lack of purpose or 
evil-doing of the individual himself. 
€L If the causes do not exist in the individ- 
ual, they may be found in the second class, 
in the wrong-doing of those around him, 
in the oppression of labor by capital, in 
the grinding process by which corpora- 
tions seek to crush the individual. The in- 
dividual may be the victim of any of a 
thousand phases of the wrong of others. 
The poverty caused by the third class, the 
weakness and injustice of human laws and 
human institutions, is also preventable, but 
to reach the cause requires time and united 
heroic effort of all individuals. 
C In the battle against poverty, those 
writers who seek to inflame the poor 
against the rich, to foment discontent be- 
tween labor and capital, do grievous wrong 

[87] 



€^e Conquest of t^e ^rebetttafcle 

to both. What the world needs is to have 
the two brought closer together in the 
bonds of human brotherhood. The poor 
should learn more of the cares, responsi- 
bilities, unrecorded charities, and absorb- 
ing worries of the rich; the rich should 
learn more intimately the sorrows, priva- 
tions, struggles, and despair of poverty. 
C. The world is learning the great truth, 
that the best way to prevent crime is to 
study the sociologic conditions in which 
it flourishes, to seek to give each man a 
better chance of living his real life by re- 
moving, ifpossible,theelementsthatmake 
wrong easy, and to him, almost necessary, 
and by inspiring him to fight life's battle 
bravely with all the help others can give 
him. Science is cooperating with religion 
in striving to conquer the evil at the root 
instead of the evil manifest as crime in the 
fruit of the branches. It is so much wiser 
to prevent than to cure; to keep some one 
from being burned is so much better than 
[88] 



C^e Conquest of t^e preventable 

inventing new poultices for unnecessary 
hurts. 

Q It is ever the little things that make up 
the sum of human misery. All the wild 
animals of the world combined do but tri- 
fling damage, when compared with the 
ravages of insect pests. The crimes of hu- 
manity, the sins that make us start back 
affrighted, do not cause as much sorrow 
and unhappiness in lifeas the multitude of 
little sins, of omission and commission, 
that the individual, and millions like him, 
must meet every day. They are not the 
evil deeds that the law can reach or punish, 
they are but the infinity of petty wrongs 
for which man can never be tried until he 
stands with bowed head before the bar of 
justice of his own conscience. 
^ The bitter words of anger and reproach 
that rise so easily to our lips and give us a 
moment's fleeting satisfaction in thus vent- 
ing our feelings, miy change the current 
of the whole life of some one near to us. 

[8 9 ] 



€^e Conquest of t^e preventable 

Thethoughtlessspeech, revealing our lack 
of tact and sympathy, cannot be recalled 
and made nothing by the plea, "I didn't 
think." To sensitive souls this is no justifi- 
cation; they feel that our hearts should be 
so filled with the instinct of love that our 
lips would need no tutor or guardian. 
CL Our unfulfilled duty may bring unhap- 
piness and misery to hundreds. The dress- 
maker's bill that a rich woman may toss 
lightly aside, as being an affair of no mo- 
ment, to be settled at her serene pleasure, 
may bring sorrow, privation or even fail- 
ure to her debtor, and through her to a 
long chain of others. The result, if seen in 
all its stern reality, seems out of all pro- 
portion to the cause. There are places in 
the Alps, where great masses of snow are 
so lightly poised that even the report of a 
gun might start a vibration that would 
dislodge an avalanche, and send it on its 
death-mission into the valley. 
C, The individual who would live his life 

[90] 



C^e Conquest of t^e ^retoentable 

to the best that is within him must make 
each moment one of influence for good. 
He must set before him as one of his ideals, 
to be progressively realized in each day of 
his living: "If I cannot accomplish great 
deeds in the world, I will do all the good 
I can by the faithful performance of the 
duties that come to my hand and being 
ever ready for all opportunities. And I 
will consecrate myself to the conquest of 
the preventable/' 

<^Let the individual say each day, as he 
rises new-created to face a new life : " To- 
day no one in the world shall suffer because 
I live. I will be kind, considerate, careful 
in thought and speech and act. I will seek 
to discover the element that weakens me 
as a power in the world, and that keeps me 
from living up to the fullness of my possi- 
bility . That weakness I will master to-day. 
I will conquer it, at any cost." 
^When any failure or sorrow comes to 
the individual, he should be glad if he can 

[91] 



C^e Conquest of fyz ^refcentable 

prove to himself that it was his fault, — 
for then he has the remedy in his own 
hands. Lying, intrigue, jealousy are never 
remedies that can prevent an evil. They 
postpone it, merely to augment it. They 
are mer.ely deferring payment of a debt 
which has to be met later, — with com- 
pound interest. It is like trying to put out 
a fire by pouring kerosene on the flames. 
C, Jealousy in the beginning is but a 
thought, — in the end it may mean the 
gallows. Selfishness often assumes seem- 
ingly harmless guises, yet it is the founda- 
tion of the world's unhappiness. Disloy- 
alty may seem to be a rare quality, but 
society is saturated with it. Judas acquired 
his reputation because of his proficiency 
in it. Sympathy which should be the at- 
mosphere of every individual life is as rare 
as human charity. The world is suffering 
from an over-supply of unnecessary evils, 
created by man.They should be made lux- 
uries, then man could dispense with them. 

[92] 



C^e Conquest of t^e ^tetoentable 

CLThe world needs societies formed of 
members pledged to the individual con- 
quest of preventable pain andsorrow. The 
individual has no right that runs counter 
to the right of any one else. There are no 
solo parts in the eternal music of life. 
Each must pour out his life in duo with 
every other. Every moment must be one 
of choice, of good or of evil. Which 
will the individual choose? His life will 
be his answer. Let him dedicate his life to 
making the world around him brighter, 
sweeter and better, and by his conquest of 
preventable pain and sorrow he will day 
by day get fuller revelation of the glory of 
the possibilities of individual living, and 
come nearer and nearer to the realization 
of his ideals. 



[93] 



%X)t Companionship of Colemnce 



Ci)e Companionship of 
Colerance 

1 INTOLERANCE is part of the 

j unnecessary friction of life. It 
| is prejudice on the war-path. 
L. ~_.J Intolerance acknowledges on- 
ly one side of any question, — its own. It 
is the assumption of a monopoly in think- 
ing, the attitude of the man who believes 
he has a corner on wisdom and truth, in 
some phase of life. 

C Tolerance is a calm, generous respect 
for the opinions of others, even of one's 
enemies. It recognizes the right of every 
man to think his own thoughts, to live 
his own life, to be himself in all things, 
so long as he does not run counter to 
the rights of others. It means giving to 
others the same freedom that we our- 
selves crave. Tolerance is silent justice, 
blended with sympathy. If he who is tol- 
erant desires to show to others the truth 

[97] 



€^e Companionship of Colerance 

as he sees it, he seeks with gentleness and 
deference to point out the way in which 
he has found peace, and certainty, and 
rest ; he tries to raise them to the recog- 
nition of higher ideals, as he has found 
them inspiring ; he endeavors in a spirit 
of love and comradeship with humanity 
to lead others rather than to drive them, 
to persuade and convince rather than to 
overawe and eclipse. 

C Tolerance does not use the battering- 
ram of argument or the club of sarcasm, 
or the rapier of ridicule, in discussing the 
weakness or wrongs of individuals. It may 
lash or scourge the evil of an age, but it is 
kind and tender with the individual ; it 
may flay the sin, but not the sinner. Toler- 
ance makes the individual regard truth as 
higher than personal opinion ; it teaches 
him to live with the windows of his life 
open towards the east to catch the first 
rays of the sunlight of truth no matter 
from whom it comes, and to realize that 

[98] 



C^e Companionship of Colerance 



the faith that he so harshly condemns may 
have the truth he desires if he would only 
look into it and test it before he repudiates 
it so cavalierly. 

Q This world of ours is growing better, 
more tolerant and liberal. The days when 
adifference in political opinions wassolved 
and cured by the axe and the block ; when 
a man's courage to stand by his religion 
meant facing the horrors of the Inquisi- 
tion or the cruelty of the stake, when 
daring to think their own thoughts on 
questions of science brought noble men 
to a pallet of straw and a dungeon cell, — 
these days have, happily, passed away. In- 
tolerance and its twin brother, Ignorance, 
weaken and die when the pure white light 
of wisdom is thrown upon them. Knowl- 
edge is the death-knell of intolerance — 
not mere book-learning, nor education in 
schools or colleges, nor accumulation of 
mere statistics, nor shreds of information, 
but the large sympathetic study of the 

■ LrfftJ [99] 



C^e Companionship of Colerance 

lives, manners, customs, aims, thoughts, 
struggles, progress, motives and ideals of 
other ages, other nations, other individ- 
uals. 

<L Tolerance unites men in the closer 
bondsof human brotherhood, brings them 
together in unity and sympathy in essen- 
tials and gives them greater liberality 
and freedom inn on-essentials. Napoleon 
when First Consul said, " Let there be no 
more Jacobins, nor Moderates, nor Roy- 
alists: letall be Frenchmen/' Sectionalism 
and sectarianism always mean concentra- 
tion on the body of a part at the expense 
of the soul of the whole. The religious 
world to-day needs more Christ and less 
sects in its gospel. When Christ lived on 
earth Christianity was a unit; when he 
died sects began. 

CL There are in America to-day, hundreds 
of small towns, scattered over the face of 
the land, that are over-supplied with 
churches. In many of these towns, just 
[ioo] 



C^e Companionship of Colerance 

emerging from the short dresses of village- 
hood, there are a dozen or more weak 
churches, struggling to keep their or- 
ganization alive. Between these churches 
there is often only a slight difference in 
creed, the tissue-paper wall of some tech- 
nicality of belief. Half-starved, dragging 
out a mere existence, trying to fight a 
large mortgage with a small congrega- 
tion and a small contribution box, there 
is little spiritual fervor. By combination, 
by cooperation, by tolerance, by the mu- 
tual surrender of non-essentials and a 
strong, vital concentration and unity on 
the great fundamental realities of Chris- 
tianity, their spiritual health and possi- 
bilities could be marvellously increased. 
Three or four sturdy, live, growing 
churches would then take the place of a 
dozen strugglers. Why have a dozen weak 
bridges across a stream, if greater good can 
come from three or four stronger ones, 
or even a single strongest bridge ? The 

[IOI] 



C^e Companion^ of tolerance 

world needs a great religious trust which 
will unite the churches into a single body 
of faith, to precede and prepare the way 
for the greater religious trust, predicted 
in Holy Writ, — the millennium. 
C We can ever be loyal to our own be- 
lief, faithful to our own cause, without 
condemning those who give their fidelity 
in accord with their own conscience or 
desires The great reformers of the world, 
men who are honestly and earnestly seek- 
ing to solve the great social problems and 
to provide means for meeting human sin 
and wrong, agreeing perfectly in their 
estimate of the gravity and awfulness of 
the situation, often propose diametrically 
opposite methods. They are regarding 
the subject from different points of view, 
and it would be intolerance for us, who 
are looking on, to condemn the men on 
either side merely because we cannot ac- 
cept their verdict as our own. 
C On the great national questions brought 
[102] 



€:^e Companionship of tolerance 

before statesmen for their decision, men 
equally able, equally sincere, just and un- 
selfish, differ in their remedies. One, as a 
surgeon, suggests cutting away the offend- 
ing matter, the use of the knife, — this 
typifies the sword, or war. Another, as a 
doctor, urges medicine that will absorb 
and cure, — this is the prescription of the 
diplomat. The third suggests waiting for 
developments, leaving the case with time 
and nature, — this is the conservative. 
But all three classes agree as to the evil 
and the need of meeting it. 
C^The conflict of authorities on every 
great question to be settled by human 
judgment should make us tolerant of the 
opinion of others, though we may be as 
confident ofthe rightness of thejudgment 
we have formed as if it were foreordained 
from the day of the creation. But if we 
receive any new light that makes us see 
clearer, let us change at once without that 
foolish consistency of some natures that 

[ io 3] 



€^e Companionship of Colerance 

continue to use last year's almanac as a 
guide to this year's eclipses. Tolerance is 
ever progressive. 

C Intolerance believes it is born with the 
peculiar talent for managing the affairs of 
others, without any knowledge of the de- 
tails, better than the men themselves, who 
are giving their life's thought to the vital 
questions. Intolerance is the voice of the 
Pharisee still crying through the ages and 
proclaiming his infallibility. 
C[ Let us not seek to fit the whole world 
with shoes from our individual last. If we 
think that all music ceased to be written 
when Wagner laid down the pen, let us 
not condemn those who find enjoyment 
in light opera. Perhaps they may some- 
time rise to our heights of artistic appre- 
ciation and learn the proper parts to 
applaud. If their lighter music satisfies 
their souls, is our Wagner doing more for 
us ? It is not fair to take from a child its 
rag doll in order to raise it to the appre- 
[104] 



W$z Companionship of Colerance 

ciation of the Venus de Milo. The rag 
doll is its Venus ; it may require a long 
series of increasingly better dolls to lead 
it to realize the beauties of the marble 
woman of Melos. 

C, Intolerance makes its great mistakes 
in measuring the needs of others from 
its own standpoint. Intolerance ignores 
the personal equation in life. What would 
be an excellent book for a man of forty 
might be worse than useless for a boy of 
thirteen. The line of activity in life that 
we would choose as our highest dream of 
bliss, as our Paradise, might, if forced on 
another, be to him worse than the after- 
death fate of the wicked, according to the 
old-fashioned theologians. What would 
be a very acceptable breakfast for a spar- 
row would be a very poor meal for an 
elephant. 

C When we sit in solemn judgment of 
the acts and characters of those around us 
and condemn them with the easy non- 

[>°5] 



€^e Companionship of Coletance 

chalance of our ignorance, yet with the 
assumption of omniscience we reveal our 
intolerance. Tolerance ever leads us to 
recognize and respect the differences in 
the natures of those who are near to us, to 
make allowance for differences in train- 
ing, in opportunities, in ideals, in motives, 
in tastes, in opinions, in temperaments 
and in feelings. Intolerance seeks to live 
other people's lives for them; sympathy 
helps us to live their lives with them. We 
must accept humanity with all its weak- 
ness, sin and folly and seek to make the 
best of it, just as humanity must accept 
us. We learn this lesson as we grow older, 
and, with the increase of our knowledge 
of the world, we see how much happier 
life would have been for us and for others 
if we had been more tolerant, more 
charitable, more generous. 
C,No one in the world is absolutely per- 
fect ; if he were he would probably be 
translated from earth to heaven, as was 

[i 06] 



C^e Compaittott^fp of Colerattce 

Elijah of old, without waiting for the 
sprouting of wings or the passport of 
death. It is a hard lesson for youth to 
learn, but we must realize, as the old col- 
lege professor said to his class of students, 
bowed with the consciousness of their 
wisdom : " No one of us is infallible, no, 
not even the youngest." Let us accept 
the little failings of those around us as we 
accept facts in nature, and make the best 
of them, as we accept the hard shells of 
nuts, the skin of fruits, the shadow that 
always accompanies light. These are not 
absolute faults, they are often but indi- 
vidual peculiarities. Intolerance sees the 
mote in its neighbor's eye as larger than 
the beam in its own. 
CL Instead of concentrating our thought 
on the one weak spot in a character, let 
us seek to find some good quality that off- 
sets it, just as a credit may more than can- 
cel a debt on a ledger account. Let us not 
constantly speak of roses having thorns, let 
[107] 



€^e Companionship of tolerance 

us be thankful that the thorns have roses. 
In Nature there are both thorns and 
prickles; thorns are organic, they have 
their root deep in the fibre and the being 
of the twig ; prickles are superficial, they 
are lightly held in the cuticle or covering 
of the twig. There are thorns in character 
that reveal an internal inharmony, that 
can be controlled only from within ; there 
are also prickles, which are merely pecu- 
liarities of temperament, that the eye of 
tolerance may overlook and the finger of 
charity can gently remove. 
C The tenderness of tolerance will illu- 
minate and glorify the world, — as moon- 
light makes all things beautiful, — if we 
only permit it. Measuring a man by his 
weakness alone is unj ust. This little frailty 
may be but a small mortgage on a large 
estate, and it is narrow and petty to judge 
by the mortgage on a character. Let us 
consider the "equity/' the excess of the 
real value over the claim against it. 
[108] 



W$t Companionship of Colerance 

<^ Unless we sympathetically seek to dis- 
cover the motive behind the act, to see 
the circumstances that inspired a course 
of living, the target at which a man is 
aiming, our snap condemnations are but 
arrogant and egotistic expressions of our 
intolerance. All things must be studied 
relatively instead of absolutely. The hour 
hand on a clock does just as valuable work 
as the minute hand, even though it is 
shorter and seems to do only one-twelfth 
as much. 

C Intolerance in the home circle shows 
itself in overdiscipline, in an atmosphere 
of severity heavy with prohibitions. The 
home becomes a place strewn with 
" Please keep off the grass " signs. It 
means the suppression of individuality, 
the breaking of the wills of children, 
instead of their development and direc- 
tion. It is the foolish attempt to mould 
them from the outside, as a potter does 
clay ; the higher conception is the wise 
[109] 



W$t Companionship of tolerance 

training that helps the child to help him- 
self in his own growth. Parents often 
forget their own youth ; they do not 
sympathize with their children in their 
need of pleasure, of dress, of companion- 
ship. There should be a few absolutely 
firm rules on essentials, the basic princi- 
ples of living, with the largest possible 
leeway for the varying manifestations 
of individuality in unimportant phases. 
Confidence, sympathy, love and trust 
would generate a spirit of tolerance and 
sweetness that would work marvels. In- 
tolerance converts live, natural children 
into prigs of counterfeit virtue and irri- 
tatingly good automatons of obedience. 
€L Tolerance is a state of mutual conces- 
sions. In the family life there should be 
this constant reciprocity of independence, 
this mutual forbearance. It is the instinc- 
tive recognition of the sacredness of in- 
dividuality, the right of each to live his 
own life as best he can. When we set our- 
[no] 



Welt Companionship of Colerance 

selves up as dictators to tyrannize over the 
thoughts, words and acts of others, we are 
sacrificing the kingly power of influence 
with which we may help others, for the 
petty triumph of tyranny which repels 
and loses them. 

Q Perhaps one reason why the sons of 
great and good men so often go astray is, 
that the earnestness, strength and virtue of 
the father,exacting strict obedience to the 
letter of the law, kills the appreciation of 
the spirit of it, breeding an intolerance 
that forces submission under which the 
fire of protest and rebellion is smoulder- 
ing, ready to burst into flame at the first 
breath of freedom. Between brother and 
sister, husband and wife, parent and child, 
master and servant, the spirit of toler- 
ance, of " making allowances," trans- 
forms a house of gloom and harshness 
into a home of sweetness and love. 
{£ In the sacred relation of parent to child 
there always comes a time when the boy 

[..I] 



C^e Companion^ of Colerance 

becomes a man, when she whom the 
father still regards but as a little girl faces 
the great problems of life as an individ- 
ual. The coming of years of discretion 
brings a day when the parents must sur- 
render their powers of trusteeship, when 
the individual enters upon his heritage 
of freedom and responsibility. Parents 
have still the right and privilege of coun- 
sel and of helpful, loving insight their 
children should respect. But in meeting 
a great question, when the son or daugh- 
ter stands before a problem that means 
happiness or misery for a lifetime, it 
must be for him or for her to decide. 
Coercion, bribery, undue influence, 
threats of disinheritance, and the other 
familiar weapons, are cruel, selfish, arro- 
gant and unjust. A child is a human be- 
ing, free to make his own life, not a slave. 
There is a clearly marked dead-line that 
it is intolerance to cross. 
CL Let us realize that tolerance is ever 

en.] 



C^e Companion^ of €olerance 

broadening ; it develops sympathy, weak- 
ens worry and inspires calmness. It is but 
charity and optimism, it is Christianity as 
a living eternal fact, not a mere theory. 
Let us be tolerant of the weakness of 
others, sternly intolerant of our own. Let 
us seek to forgive and forget the faults of 
others, losing sight, to a degree, of what 
they are in the thought of what they may 
become. Let us fill their souls with the in- 
spiring revelation of their possibilities in 
the majestic evolution march of human- 
ity. Let us see, for ourselves and for them, 
in the acorn of their present the towering 
oak of their future. 

C, We should realize the right of every 
human soul to work out its own destiny, 
with our aid, our sympathy, our inspira- 
tion, if we art thus privileged to help him 
to live his life ; but it is intolerance to try 
to live it for him. He sits alone on the 
throne of his individuality ; he must reign 
alone, and at the close of his rule must give 

["3] 



€^e Companion^ of Coletrance 

his own account to the God of the ages 
of the deeds of his kingship. Life is a dig- 
nified privilege, a glorious prerogative of 
every man, and it is arrogant intolerance 
that touches the sacred ark with the hand 
of unkind condemnation. 



["4] 



C^e C^ingg t^at Come too late 



Ci)e Clings tfjat Come too 
2Ute 



IT 



TIME seems a grim old humor- 
i ist, with a fondness for after- 
| thoughts. The things that come 
— ~J too late are part of his sarcasm. 
Each generation is engaged in correcting 
the errors of its predecessors, and in sup- 
plying new blunders for its own posterity 
to set right. Each generation bequeaths 
to its successor its wisdom and its folly, its 
wealth of knowledge and its debts of error 
and failure. The things that come too late 
thus mean only the delayed payments on 
old debts. They mean that the world is 
growing wiser, and better, truer, nobler, 
and more just. It is emerging from the 
dark shadows of error into the sunshine of 
truth and justice. They prove that Time is 
weaving a beauteous fabric from the warp 
and woof of humanity, made up of shreds 
and tangles of error and truth. 



€^e Clings t^at Come too Hate 

^ The things that come too late are the 
fuller wisdom, the deferred honors, the 
truer conception of the work of pioneers, 
the brave sturdy fighters who battled alone 
for truth and were misunderstood and un- 
recognized. It means the world'sfiner atti- 
tude toward life. If looked at superficially, 
the things that come too late make us feel 
helpless, hopeless, pessimistic ; if seen with 
the eye of deeper wisdom, they reveal to 
us the grand evolution march of humanity 
toward higher things. It is Nature's proc- 
lamation that, in the end, Right must tri- 
umph, Truth must conquer, and Justice 
must reign. For us, as individuals, it is a 
warning and an inspiration, — a warning 
against withholding love, charity, kind- 
ness, sympathy, justice, and helpfulness, 
till it is too late; an inspiration for us to 
live ever at our best, ever up to the maxi- 
mum of effort, not worrying about re- 
sults, but serenely confident that they 
must come. 

[i 1 8] 



€^e €$fng£ tyat Come too Late 

€L It takes over thirty years for the light of 
some of the stars to reach the earth, some 
a hundred, some a thousand years. Those 
stars do not become visible till their light 
reaches and reacts on human vision. It 
takes an almost equal time for the light of 
some of the world's great geniuses to meet 
real, seeing eyes. Then we see these men 
as the brilliant stars in the world's gallery 
of immortal great ones. This is why con- 
temporary reputation rarely indicates last- 
ing fame. We are constantly mistaking 
fireflies of cleverness for stars of genius. 
But Time brings all things right. The 
fame, though, brings no joy, or encour- 
agement, or inspiration to him who has 
passed beyond this world's lights and shad- 
ows; it has the sadness of the honors that 
come too late, a touch of the farcical min- 
gled with its pathos. Tardy recognition is 
better than none at all, it is better, though 
late, than never ; but it is so much truer and 
kinder and more valuable if never late. 



C^e ^in^ t^at Come too late 

We are so inclined to send our condem- 
nation and our snapshot criticisms by- 
express, and our careful, honest condem- 
nation by slow freight. 
C, In October, 1635, Roger Williams,be- 
cause of his inspiring pleas for individual 
liberty, was ordered by the General Court 
of Massachusetts to leave the colony for- 
ever. He went to Rhode Island, where he 
lived for nearly fifty years. But the official 
conscience grew a little restless, and a few 
years ago, in April, 1899, Massachusetts 
actually made atonement for its rash act. 
The original papers, yellow, faded, and 
crumbling, were taken from their pigeon- 
hole tomb, and "by an ordinary motion, 
made, seconded, and adopted/' the order 
of banishment was solemnly "annulled 
and repealed, and made of no effect what- 
ever." The ban, under which Roger Wil- 
liams had lain for over 260 years, was 
lifted. And there is no reason now, accord- 
ing to law, why Roger Williams cannot 
[120] 



%ty Clings tljat Come too late 

enter the State of Massachusetts and reside 
therein. The action was to the credit and 
honor of the State; it was right in its 
spirit, and Roger being in the spirit for 
more than two centuries, may have smiled 
gently and understood. But the reparation 
was really — over-delayed. 
C The mistakes, the sin and folly of one 
age may be partially atoned for by a suc- 
ceeding age, but the individual stands 
alone. For what we do and for what we 
leave undone, we alone are responsible. 
If we permit the golden hours that might 
be consecrated to higher things to trickle 
like sand through our fingers, no one can 
ever restore them to us. 
C Human affection is fed by signs and 
tokens of that affection. Merely having 
kindly feelings is not enough, they should 
be made manifest in action. The parched 
earth is not refreshed by the mere fact of 
water in the clouds, it is only when the 
blessing of rain actually descends that it 

[121] 



C^e t^itt&s t^at Come too late 

awakens to new life. We are so ready to 
say " He knows how much I think of 
him," and to assume that as a fitting sub- 
stitute for expression. We may know that 
the sun is shining somewhere and still 
shiver for lack of its glow and warmth. 
Love should be constantly made evident 
in little acts of thoughtfulness, words of 
sweetness and appreciation, smiles and 
handclasps of esteem. It should be shown 
to be a loving reality instead of a memory 
by patience, forbearance, courtesy, and 
kindness. 

C This theory of presumed confidence in 
the persistence of affection is one of the 
sad phases of married life. We should have 
roses of love, ever-blooming, ever-breath- 
ing perfume, instead of dried roses pressed 
in the family Bible, merely for reference, 
as a memorial of what was, instead of guar- 
antee of what is. Matrimony too often 
shuts the door of life and leaves senti- 
ment, consideration and chivalry on the 
[122] 



%\>z things t^at Come too Late 

outside. The feeling may possibly be still 
alive, but it does not reveal itself rightly ; 
the rhymed poetry of loving has changed 
to blank verse and later into dull prose. 
As the boy said of his father: "He's a 
Christian, but he's not working much at 
it now." Love without manifestation does 
not feed the heart anymore than a locked 
bread-box feeds the body; it does not illu- 
minate and brighten the round of daily 
duties any more than an unlit lamp light- 
ens a room. There is often such a craving 
in the heart of a husband or a wife for 
expression in words of human love and 
tenderness that they are welcomed no 
matter from what source they may come. 
If there were more courtships continued 
after marriage, the work of the divorce 
courts would be greatly lessened. This 
realization is often one of the things that 
come too late. 

C There are more people in this world 
hungering for kindness, sympathy, com- 

[ I2 3] 



C^e Ctyittgg tyat Come too Hate 

radeship and love, than are hungering for 
bread. We often refrain from giving a 
hearty word of encouragement, praise or 
congratulation to some one, even where 
we recognize that our feelings are known, 
for fear of making him conceited or over- 
confident. Let us tear down these dykes 
of reserve, these walls of petty repression, 
and let in the flood of our feelings. There 
have been few monuments reared to the 
memory of those who have failed in life 
because of overpraise. There is more 
chiseled flattery on tombstones than was 
ever heard in life by the dead those 
stones now guard. Man does not ask for 
flattery, he does not long for fulsome 
praise, he wants the honest, ringing sound 
of recognition of what he has done, fair 
appreciation of what he is doing, and 
sympathy with what he is striving to do. 
C[ Why is it that death makes us suddenly 
conscious of a hundred virtues in a man 
who seemed commonplace and faulty in 
[124] 



€^e Ctyngg t^at Come too JLate 

life ? Then we speak as though an angel 
had been living in our town for years and 
we had suddenly discovered him. If he 
could only have heard these words while 
living, if he could have discounted the 
eulogies at, say even sixty per cent, they 
would have been an inspiration to him 
when weary, worn and worried by the 
problems of living. But now the ears are 
stilled to all earthly music, and even if 
they could hear our praise, the words 
would be but useless messengers of love 
that came too late. 

C It is right to speak well of the dead, to 
remember their strength and to forget 
their weakness, and to render to their 
memory the expressions of honor, jus- 
tice, love and sorrow that fill our hearts. 
But it is the living, ever the living that 
need it most. The dead have passed be- 
yond the helpfulness ; our wildest cries of 
agony and regret bring no answering echo 
from the silences of the unknown. Those 

['25] 



€^e C^ingjs t^at Come too Late 

who are facing the battle of life, still seek- 
ing bravely to do and to be, — they need 
our help, our companionship, our love, all 
that is best in us. Better is the smallest 
flower placed in our warm, living hands 
than mountains of roses banked round our 
casket. 

C, If we have failed in our expressions to 
the dead, the deep sense of our sorrow and 
the instinctive rush of feeling proclaim 
the vacuum of duty we now seek too late 
to fill. But there is one atonement that is 
not too late. It is in making all humanity 
legatees of the kindness and human love 
that we regret has been unexpended, it is 
in bringing brightness, courage and cheer 
into the lives of those around us. Thus our 
regret will be shown to be genuine, not a 
mere temporary gush of emotionalism. 
C It is during the formative period, the 
time when a man is seeking to get a foot- 
hold, that help counts for most, when even 
the slightest aid is great. A few books lent 
[126] 



€^e C^mgg t^at Come too Late 

to Andrew Carnegie when he was begin- 
ning his career were to him an inspira- 
tion ; he has nobly repaid the loan, made 
posterity his debtor a million-fold by his 
beneficence in sprinkling libraries over 
the whole country. Help the saplings, 
the young growing trees of vigor, — the 
mighty oaks have no need of your aid. 
C The heartening words should come 
when needed, not when they seem only 
hypocriticprotestations, or dextrousprep- 
arations for future favors. Columbus, sur- 
rounded by his mutinous crew, threaten- 
ing to kill him, alone amid the crowd, had 
no one to stand by him. But he neared 
land, and riches opened before them ; then 
they fell at his feet, proclaimed him almost 
a god and said he truly was inspired from 
Heaven. Success transfigured him — a 
long line of pebbly beach and a few trees 
made him divine. A little patience along 
the way, a little closer companionship, a 
little brotherly love in his hours of watch- 
[127] 



W$z W$xi§$ t^at Come too Hate 

ing, waiting, and hoping would have been 
great balm to his soul. 
CL It is in childhood that pleasures count 
most, when the slightest investment of 
kindness brings largest returns. Let us 
give the children sunlight, love, com- 
panionship, sympathy with their little 
troubles and worries that seem to them 
so great, genuine interest in their grow- 
ing hopes, their vague, unproportioned 
dreams and yearnings. Let us put our- 
selves into their places, view the world 
through their eyes so that we may gently 
correct the errors of their perspective by 
our greater wisdom. Such trifles will make 
them genuinely happy, happier by far 
than things a thousand times greater that 
come too late. 

" C, Procrastination is the father of a count- 
less family of things that come too late. 
Procrastination means making an ap- 
pointment with opportunity to "call 
again to-morrow. " It kills self-control, 

[128] 



€^e C^ittgg tyat Come too Hate 

saps mental energy, makes man a creature 
of circumstances instead of their creator. 
There is one brand of procrastination 
that is a virtue. It is never doing to-day 
a wrong that can be put off till to-mor- 
row, never performing an act to-day that 
may make to-morrow ashamed. 
C, There are little estrangements in life, 
little misunderstandings that are passed 
by in silence between friends, each too 
closely armored with pride, and enam- 
oured with self to break. There is a time 
when a few straightforward words would 
set it all right, the clouds would break 
and the sunshine of love burst forth again. 
But each nurses a weak, petty sense of 
dignity, the rift grows wider, they drift 
apart, and each goes his lonely way, hun- 
gering for the other. They may waken to 
realization too late to piece the broken 
strands of affection into a new life. 
C The wisdom that comes too late in a 
thousand phases of life usually has an 
[129] 



€^e C^ittgg tyat Come too late 

irritating, depressing effect on the indi- 
vidual. He should charge a large part 
of it to the account of experience. If no 
wisdom came too late there would be no 
experience. It means, after all, only that 
we are wiser to-day than we were yester- 
day, that we see all things in truer rela- 
tion, that our pathway of life has been 
illuminated. 

€L The world is prone to judge by results. 
It is glad to be a stockholder in our suc- 
cess and prosperity, but it too often 
avoids the assessments of sympathy and 
understanding. The man who pulls 
against the stream may have but a stanch 
two or three to help him. When the tide 
turns and his craft swiftens its course and 
he is carried along without effort, he finds 
boats hurrying to him from all directions 
as if he had suddenly woke up and found 
himself in a regatta. The help then comes 
too late ; he does not need it. He himself 
must then guard against the temptation 

[ l 3°] 



€^e ^fyin^ tyat Come too JLate 

of cynicism and coldness and selfishness. 
Then he should realize and determine 
that what he terms " the way of the 
world " shall not be his " way." That he 
will not be too late with his stimulus to 
others who have struggled bravely as he 
has done, but who being less strong may 
drop the oars in despair for the lack of 
the stimulus of even a friendly word of 
heartening in a crisis. 
C. The old song of dreary philosophy 
says: "The mill will never grind again 
with the water that is past." Why should 
the mill expect to use the same water 
over and over ? That water may now be 
merrily turning mill-wheels further down 
the valley, continuing without ceasing, its 
good work. It is folly to think so much 
of the water that is past. Think more of 
the great stream that is ever flowing on. 
Use that as best you can, and when it has 
passed you will be glad that it came, and 
be satisfied with its service. 

t"3i] 



€^e C^fn&s t^at Come too Hate 

C[ Time is a mighty stream that comes 
each day with unending flow. To think 
of this water of past time with such re- 
gret that it shuts our eyes to the mighty 
river of the present is sheer folly. Let us 
make the best we can of to-day in the 
best preparation for to-morrow ; then 
even the things that come too late will be 
new revelations of wisdom to use in the 
present now before us, and in the future 
we are forming. 



I>3 2 ] 



C^e Way of tye Befotmet 



Cj)e W&y of tfje Reformer 

PZIZI^riHE reformers of the world are 
| its men of mighty purpose. 
I They are men with the courage 
L^._ ,—.«j of individual conviction, men 
who dare run counter to the criticism of 
inferiors, men who voluntarily bear crosses 
for what they accept as right, even with- 
out the guarantee of a crown. They are 
men who gladly go down into the depths 
of silence, darkness and oblivion, but only 
to emerge finally like divers, with pearls 
in their hands. 

CL He who labors untiringly toward the 
attainment of some noble aim, with eyes 
fixed on the star of some mighty purpose, 
as the Magi followed the star in the East, 
is a reformer. He who is loyal to the in- 
spiration of some great religious thought, 
and with strong hand leads weak trem- 
bling steps of faith into the glory of cer- 

[i3S] 



€^e Way of t^e Reformer 

tainty, is a reformer. He who follows the 
thin thread of some revelation of Nature 
in any of the sciences, follows it in the 
spirit of truth through a maze of doubt, 
hope, experiment and questioning, till the 
tiny guiding thread grows stronger and 
firmer to his touch, leading him to some 
wondrous illumination of Nature's law, 
is a reformer. 

C He who goes up alone into the moun- 
tains of truth and, glowing with the ra- 
diance of some mighty revelation, returns 
to force the hurrying world to listen to his 
story is a reformer. Whoever seeks to work 
out for himself his destiny, the life-work 
that all his nature tells him should be his, 
bravely, calmly and with due considera- 
tion of the rights of others and his duties 
to them, is a reformer. 
CL These men who renounce the com- 
monplace and conventional for higher 
things are reformersbecause they are striv- 
ing to bring about new conditions; they 

[136] 



%ty Way of t^e Reformer 

are consecrating their lives to ideals. They 
are the brave aggressive vanguard of prog- 
ress. They are men who can stand a siege, 
who can take long forced marches without 
a murmur, who set their teeth and bow 
their heads as they fight their way through 
the smoke, who smile at the trials and pri- 
vations that dare to daunt them . They care 
naught for the hardships and perils of the 
fight, for they are ever inspired by the flag 
of triumph that seems already waving on 
the citadel of their hopes. 
C, If we are facing some great life ambi- 
tion let us see if our heroic plans are good, 
high, noble and exalted enough for the 
price we must pay for their attainment. 
Let us seriously and honestly look into our 
needs, our abilities, our resources, our re- 
sponsibilities, to assure ourselves that it is 
no mere passing whim that is leading us. 
Let us hear and consider all counsel, all 
light that may be thrown on every side, 
let us hear it as a judge on the bench lis— 

037] 



C^e Way of t^e Reformer 

tens to the evidence and then makes his 
own decision. The choice of a life-work is 
too sacred a responsibility to the individual 
to be lightly decided for him by others 
less thoroughly informed than himself. 
When we have weighed in the balance the 
mighty question and have made our de- 
cision, let us act, let us concentrate our 
lives upon that which we feel is supreme, 
and, never forsaking a real duty, never be 
diverted from the attainment of the high- 
est things, no matter what honest price we 
may have to pay for their realization and 
conquest. 

C, When Nature decides on any man as a 
reformer she whispers to him his great 
message, she places in his hand the staff of 
courage, she wraps around him the robes 
of patience and self-reliance and starts him 
on his way. Then, in order that he may 
have strength to live through it all, she 
mercifully calls him back for a moment 
and makes him — an optimist. 

[138] 



€^e Way of t^e !5eformet: 

C The way of the reformer is hard, very 
hard. The world knows little of it, for it is 
rare that the reformer reveals the scars of 
conflict, the pangs of hope deferred, the 
mighty waves of despair that wash over a 
great purpose. Sometimes men of sincere 
aim and unselfish high ambition, weary 
and worn with the struggle, have permit- 
ted the world to hear an uncontrolled sob 
of hopelessness or a word of momentary 
bitterness at the seeming emptiness of all 
effort. But men of great purpose and noble 
ideals must know that the path of the re- 
former is loneliness. They must live from 
within rather than in dependence on 
sources of help from without. Their mis- 
sion, their exalted aim, their supreme ob- 
ject in living, which focuses all their en- 
ergy, must be their source of strength and 
inspiration. The reformer must ever light 
the torch of his own inspiration. His own 
hand must ever guard thesacred flame ashe 
moves steadily forward on his lonely way. 

[>39] 



'Qfyt Way of tyt Kzfotmtt 

4£ The reformer in morals, in education, 
in religion, in sociology, in invention, in 
philosophy, in any line of aspiration, is 
ever a pioneer. His privilege is to blaze the 
path for others, to mark at his peril a road 
that others may follow in safety. He must 
not expect that the way will be graded and 
asphalted for him. He must realize that 
he must face injustice, ingratitude, oppo- 
sition, misunderstanding, the cruel criti- 
cism of contemporaries and often, hardest 
of all, the wondering reproach of those 
who love him best. 

Q He must not expect the tortoise to sym- 
pathize with the flight of the eagle. A 
great purpose is ever an isolation. Should a 
soldier leading the forlorn hope complain 
that the army is not abreast of him? The 
glorious opportunity before him should so 
inspirehim,soabsorbhim,thathewillcare 
naught for the army except to know that 
if he lead as he should, and do that which 
the crisis demands, the army must follow. 
[140] 



C^e Way of t^e Reformer 

^ The reformer must realize without a 
trace of bitterness that the busy world 
cares little for his struggles, it cares only to 
joy in his final triumph; it will share his 
feasts but not his fasts. Christ was alone in 
Gethsemane, but — at the sermon in the 
wilderness, where food was provided, the 
attendance was four thousand. 
^ The world is honest enough in its atti- 
tude. It takes time for the world to real- 
ize, to accept, and to assimilate a large 
truth. Since the dawn of history, the great 
conservative spirit of every age, that bal- 
last that keeps the world in poise, makes 
the slow acceptance of great truths an es- 
sential for its safety. It wisely requires 
proof, clear, absolute, undeniable attesta- 
tion, before it fully accepts. Sometimes 
the perfect enlightenment takes years, 
sometimes generations. It is but the safe- 
guard of truth. Time is the supreme test, 
the final court of appeals that winnows out 
the chaff of false claims, pretended revela- 

[hi] 



€^e Way of t^e Reformer 

tion, empty boast, and idle dreams. Time 
is the touchstone that finally reveals all 
true gold. The process is slow, necessarily 
so, and the fate of the world's geniuses 
and reformers in the balance of their con- 
temporary criticism, should have a sweet- 
ness of consolation rather than the bitter- 
ness of cynicism. If the greatest leaders of 
the world have had to wait for recogni- 
tion, should we, whose best work may be 
but trifling in comparison with theirs, ex- 
pect instant sympathy, appreciation, and 
cooperation, where we are merely grow- 
ing toward our own attainment? 
C. The world ever says to its leaders, by its 
attitude if not in words, "If you would 
lead us to higher realms of thought, to 
purer ideals of life, and flash before us, like 
the handwriting on the wall, all the pos- 
sible glories of development,^^ must pay 
the price for it, not we/' The world has a 
law as clearly defined as the laws of Kep- 
ler: "Contemporary credit for reform 

[142] 



€^e Way of t^e Eeformer 

works in any line will be in inverse pro- 
portion to the square root of their impor- 
tance/' Give us a new fad and we will 
prostrate ourselves in the dust; give us a 
new philosophy, a marvelous revelation, a 
higher conception of life and morality, 
and we may pass you by, but posterity will 
pay for it. Send your messages CO. D. and 
posterity will settle for them. You ask for 
bread; posterity will giveyouastone, called 
a monument. 

€L There is nothing in this to discourage 
the highest efforts of genius. Genius is 
great because it is decades in advance of its 
generation. To appreciate genius requires 
comprehension and the same characteris- 
tics. The public can fully appreciate only 
what is a few steps in advance ; it must grow 
to the appreciation of great thought. The 
genius or the reformer should accept this 
as a necessary condition. It is the price he 
must pay for being in advance of his gen- 
eration, just as front seats in the orchestra 

[■43] 



C^e Wav of t^e JSefotwt: 

cost more than those in the back row of 
the third gallery. 

€L The world is impartial in its methods. 
It says ever, "you may suffer now, but 
we will give you later fame." Posthu- 
mous fame means that the individual 
may shiver with cold, but his grand- 
children will get fur-lined ulsters; the 
individual plants acorns, his posterity sells 
the oaks. Posthumous fame or recogni- 
tion is a check made out to the individ- 
ual, but payable only to his heirs. 
€L There is nothing the world cries out 
for so constantly as a new idea ; there is 
nothing the world fears so much. The 
milestones of progress in the history of 
the ages tell the story. Galileo was cast 
into prison in his seventieth year and his 
works were prohibited. He had commit- 
ted no crime, but he was in advance of 
his generation. Harvey's discovery of the 
circulation of the blood was not accepted 
by the universities of the world till twenty- 

[H4] 



C^e Way of t^e Reformer 

five years after its publication. Froebel, 
the gentle inspired lover of children, suf- 
fered the trials and struggles of the re- 
former, and his system of teaching was 
abolished in Prussia because it was "cal- 
culated to bring up our young people in 
atheism/' So it was with thousands of 
others. 

€L The world says with a large airy sweep 
of the hand, "the opposition to progress 
is all in the past, the great reformer or 
the great genius is recognized to-day." 
No, in the past they tried to kill a great 
truth by opposition; now we gently seek 
to smother it by making it a fad. 
C[ So it is written in the book of human 
nature : The saviours of the world must 
ever be martyrs. The death of Christ on 
the cross for the people he had come to 
save, typifies the temporary crucifixion 
of public opinion that comes to all who 
bring to the people the message of some 
great truth, some clearer revelation of 

[•45] 



C^e Ww of t^e Eeformet: 

the divine. Truth, right, and justice must 
triumph. Let us never close the books of 
a great work and say "it has failed." 
C No matter how slight seem results, 
how dark the outlook, the glorious con- 
summation of the past, the revelation of 
the future, must come. And Christ lived 
thirty years and he had twelve disciples, 
one denied him, one doubted him, one 
betrayed him, and the other nine were 
very human. And in the supreme crisis of 
His life "they ^//forsook him and fled," 
but to-day — His followers are millions. 
C[ Sweet indeed is human sympathy, the 
warm hand-clasp of confidence and love 
brings a rich inflow of new strength to 
him who is struggling, and the knowl- 
edge that someone dear to us sees with 
love and comradeship our future through 
our eyes, is a wondrous draught of new 
life. If we have this, perhaps the loyalty 
of two or three, what the world says or 
thinks about us should count for little. 

[i 4 6] 



C^e Way of t^e Eeformer 

But if this be denied us, then must we 
bravely walk our weary way alone, toward 
the sunrise that must come. 
CL The little world around us that does not 
understand us, does not appreciate our 
ambition or sympathize with our efforts, 
that seem to it futile, is not intentionally 
cruel, calloused, bitter, blind, or heartless. 
It is merely that busied with its own pur- 
suits, problems and pleasures, it does not 
fully realize, does not see as we do. 
C The world does not see our ideal as we 
see it, does not feel the glow of inspira- 
tion that makes our blood tingle, our eye 
brighten, and our soul seem flooded with 
a wondrous light. It sees naught but the 
rough block of marble before us and the 
great mass ofchips and fragments of seem- 
ingly fruitless effort at our feet, but it does 
not see the angel of achievement slowly 
emerging from its stone prison, from 
nothingness into being, under the tireless 
strokes of our chisel. It hears no faint 

[■47] 



C^e Way of tfre Reformer 

rustle of wings that seem already real to 
us nor the glory of the music of triumph 
already ringing in our ears. 
C There come dark, dreary days in all 
great work, when effort seems useless, 
when hope almost appears a delusion, 
and confidence the mirage of folly. Some- 
times for days your sails flap idly against 
the mast, with not a breath of wind to 
move you on your way, and with a paraly- 
zing sense of helplessness you just have to 
sit and wait and wait. Sometimes your 
craft of hope is carried back by a tide that 
seems to undo in moments your work of 
months. But it may not be really so, you 
maybe put into a new channel that brings 
you nearer your haven than you dared 
to hope. This is the hour that tests us, 
that determines whether we are masters 
or slaves of conditions. As in battle of 
Marengo, it is the fight that is made when 
all seems lost that really counts and wrests 
victory from the hand of seeming defeat. 

[i 4 8] 



%\>t Way of tfre Beftmtier 

iL If you are seeking to accomplish any- 
great serious purpose that your mind and 
your heart tell you is right, you must 
have the spirit of the reformer. You must 
have the courage to face trial, sorrow and 
disappointment, to meet them squarely 
and to move forward unscathed and un- 
daunted. In the sublimity of your perfect 
faith in the outcome, you can make them 
as powerless to harm you, as a dewdrop 
falling on the Pyramids. 
C. Truth, with time as its ally, always 
wins in the end. The knowledge of the 
inappreciation, the coldness, and the in- 
difference of the world, should never 
make you pessimistic. They should in- 
spire you with that large, broad optimism 
that sees that all the opposition of the 
world can never keep back the triumph 
of truth, that your work is so great that 
the petty jealousies, misrepresentations, 
and hardships caused by those around you, 
dwindle into nothingness. What cares the 

[H9] 



€^e Way of t^e aMormet; 

messenger of the king for his trials and 
sufferings if he know that he has deliv- 
ered his message ? Large movements, 
great plans, always take time for develop- 
ment. If you want great things, pay the 
price like a man. 

C, Any one can plant radishes ; it takes 
courage to plant acorns and to wait for 
the oaks. Learn to look not merely at 
the clouds, but through them to the sun 
shining behind them. When things look 
darkest, grasp your weapon firmer and 
fight harder. There is always more prog- 
ress than you can perceive, and it is 
really only the outcome of the battle that 
counts. 

C. And when it is all over and the vic- 
tory is yours, and the smoke clears away 
and the smell of the powder is dissipated, 
and you bury the friendships that died 
because they could not stand the strain, 
and you nurse back the wounded and 
faint-hearted who loyally stood by you, 

[150] 



%X)t Way of t^e Reformer 

even when doubting, then the hard years 
of fighting will seem but a dream. You 
will stand brave, heartened, strengthened 
by the struggle, re-created to a new, better 
and stronger life by a noble battle, nobly 
waged, in a noble cause. And the price 
will then seem to you — nothing. 



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